An Analysis Of Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est

“Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” (Owen 1514) is one of many somber lines that Owen uses to depict a World War I battleground in his work Dulce et Decorum Est. This poem begins with descriptions of the cruelty of war, of soldiers who were missing boots, but were so frightened that they limped along, exhausted beyond comparison, unconscious of even bombshells as they dropped. Out of these deteriorating men, Owen fashions a narrator, a man lucky enough to snap his mask into place before a flood of noxious gas filled the air. One comrade, however, was comparatively unlucky, and breathed the hazardous chemicals. The narrator is then forced to watch his comrade suffer as told in a particularly sad line of the poem, “He