Commentary of Dulce Et Decorum Est

Commentary on Dulce et Decorum est

‘Dulce et Decorum est’, is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during WWI, and was published posthumously in 1920. With its ironic Latin title of “it is sweet and honourable”, this poem consists of many literary devices in which encapsulates the writer’s own experience about the cruelty and horror of war. Within the first stanza, Owen depicts the poor conditions of the soldiers during the war with series of similes and metaphors. More literary devices were used in the second and third stanza as he begins to describe the effect and horror of the poison gas. As the poem progresses to its last stanza, Owen continues to describe the cruelty of war, sharing his anti-war ideas to the audience.

The poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, in the full phrase of Dulce et ecorum est pro patria mori, means ‘it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country’ in Latin, originated in the Roman poet Horace. Owen used the “it is sweet and honourable” part as the title of his anti-war poem. It is ironic that he decided to use this as the title as this poem is describing the horror and cruelty of war. Owen famously rejected the idea of the phrase as ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ depicts his anti-war ideas through his description of the horror and condition that the soldiers and himself had experienced during WWI. He especially focused his poem on one particular moment; when he and his platoon were attacked by poison gas, and described how some of his mates suffered from the effect of the poison gas. Although this is a famous anti-war poem, rejecting the ideas of the title, it still described how soldiers died in honour to fight for their country, in which agrees with the ‘honourable’ part of the title, creating contrasting themes and gives the audience an overall expectation of what the poem is going to be about. This poem consists the structure of having an 8-line stanza, 6-line stanza, 2-line stanza and a 12-line stanza with the rhyme scheme of ABAB, CDCD, etc. in a consistent pattern. However, the rhythm of each line appears to be irregular within every stanza.

At the beginning of ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, Owen bombards the audiences using series of similes to describe the exhausted soldiers ‘coughing like hags’ and ‘like old beggars’ marching through piles of mud ‘asleep’ with many had lost their boots’. As stanza progresses, Owen used metaphors such as ‘blood-shod’ to demonstrate how the soldiers were wearing shoes of blood as they walk through the blood and gore surrounding this in the trenches. The soldiers were ‘drunk with fatigue’ and ‘deaf … to the hoots’ suggests that the soldiers were in such a poor condition that they couldn’t even hear Five-Nines (gas bombs) being ‘dropped behind’. Owen’s poem starts off with a slow pace, which creates an ambience of dismay and dejection by utilizing words such as ‘sludge’ and “trudge”. The first stanza is mainly focused on giving the Readers discomforts and grieves of the soldiers who are in desperate need of medical supplies and attention by describing how the soldiers are mentally and physically distressed from the brutal and horrifying experiences of the war. Owen’s illustrative use of imagery within this stanza allows the readers to picture and understand the poor environment and physical conditions that the soldiers are in. The use of simile and metaphor in this stanza illustrates an image of a war field, with soldiers marching in the trenches, particularly focusing on the exhaustion of the soldiers and how they ‘marched asleep’ on a field of mud and blood, symbolising the poor conditions of the soldiers during war. The first stanza is mostly written using the regular iambic pentameter, with the regular rhythm of the first stanza reflects the relentless and the horror that men experienced during the war. Although the opening spondees of lines 1, 2 and 5 were used to catch the audiences’ attention, as well as the ‘blood-shot’ and ‘all blind’ in line 6. The connotation of words within this stanza and throughout the poem is very serious and consists of cacophony, which the words within the poem has harsh and discordant sounds, which is also very effective in generating the tone of this poem as it is about the harshness and horror of war. As the tone of this poem is very serious and harsh, the mood of this poem would be frightening as Owen describes the horror and harshness of the environment during the war.

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