IOC Ducle et decorum est

Theoretical Further Individual Oral
Key ideas and Central Tension

The Poem Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen describes at first the horrific face of war and its battlefields. After this Wilfred has a short reflection on the general experience of fighting WWI. He has a very bittersweet tone and is not in favor of the War. This comes clear as one analyses the last four lines in the last stanza. In the first stanza Wilfred Owen compares the soldiers that are usually held in high regards to old beggars and sacks. They are limping on blood-shod having lost their boots already. By this the author depicts the helplessness that the soldiers are exposed to. They have almost no impact of meaning on what the day brings with it. They just try to survive the day in the trenches while the hunting flares of the falling Five-Nines bombs are upon them. The second stanza adds on to the terrific image of helplessness. It is the ecstasy of fumbling to in order to put on the gas mask just in time. The soldiers are clumsily fumbling, yelling, stumbling and drowning in the gas that was dropped by the enemy. This really depicts Wilfred Owen frustration with the War. He as most the soldiers did not feel why they needed to fight this war. The last stanza is a reflection of the war as he remembers gazing on a wagon that carried the victims of the Gas Bombs. He uses negatively loaded emotional words as corrupted to describe his anger and frustration with the War. The war is usually seen as glory and honor. He cannot make out where the glory and honor in this war is and therefore he declares the Horace statement “Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori” for the oldest lie every told. These men are dying for their country just that there is no honor or glory to it. And so he tells his friend that this is not honorable or glorious story he would tell his children. The purpose that Wilfred Owen had intended for this poem was that he wanted to show the people what the face of really is and not what the propaganda states at home. There is no glory or honor nowadays in fighting and dying for ones country. The gas or the bullet consumes one without a proper fight, chance or conscience. Furthermore the poem makes the authors anger and frustration with the war very clear and why wars like this one should be prevented from further happening in the future.