All Quiet On The Western Front And Dulce Et Decorum Est Comparison Analysis

World War One was a very horrible and gruesome war in the early 20th century. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, about 8.5 million soldiers died during it, and there were over 37 million total casualties, making it one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Maria Remarque describes the life of a WWI soldier and the effects it had on the men. Wilfred Owen wrote the poem Dulce et Decorum Est as a soldier during the war. Similarly, this poem focused on describing a scene of tired, weary soldiers experiencing one of their comrades dying. Both All Quiet on the Western Front and Dulce et Decorum Est focus on showing the horrors of war, challenging the idea that war is heroic and beautiful.
The poem Dulce et Decorum Est describes the chaos and torment that soldiers experience using powerful metaphors and similes. Owen uses descriptive similes to show the poor condition the soldiers are in. When Owen is describing their situation, he writes that they are “coughing like hags” (2). When he compares the soldiers to poor and unclean women, he demonstrates how wretched the men are, contrary to the idea that soldiers are strong and healthy. Next, Owen is creating a scene where one of the men is caught in the mustard gas, without a mask. He says that his actions were “like a man in fire or lime” (12). Both lime and fire cause a burning sensation on human skin, so the man must be in a great amount of pain and agony. Wilfred Owen also uses strong metaphors to paint a picture of suffering. When he is describing the condition of the soldiers, he also uses the metaphor “drunk with fatigue” (14). This comparison is able to portray to the reader that the men are so tired and worn out that they are controlled by it. Everything they do, they do it with a sense of slowness and absent mindedness. Lastly, when Owen is writing about the man in the gas, he says that “I saw him drowning” (14). His fellow soldier wasn’t actually drowning in water, but he was rather being consumed by death. The author cleverly uses this metaphor to depict a scene of torment in the reader’s
All Quiet on the Western Front focuses on the effect of war on the soldier and his everyday life. In the middle of the novel, Paul is given two weeks of leave from the war. He goes home, and he doesn’t know how to connect with his family, and feels distant from all the civilians. When he goes outside, he mentions “the screaming of the tramcars, which resembles the shriek of a shell” (165). This shows how war has changed Paul so much that now the sounds of trolleys bring him horrific flashbacks. Soon after he returns from his leave, his father and sister visit him to bring him gifts from his sick mother. When they get there, Paul says that they “do not know what to talk about” (196). This is another piece of evidence that shows how the war has distanced Paul from all other realities, such as his family. The theme of Dulce et Decorum Est is the horror of death, which is used to undermine the idea of war as noble. When the dying soldier is travelling in the cart, Owen describes the horrific noises he makes: “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” (19). This scene illustrates the painful and drawn - out death that the man is forced to have, and the soldiers all have to listen to it. Next, at the end of the poem, Owen leaves the reader with one last