Dulce Et Decorum Est Propaganda

Wilfred Owen was a poet from the brutal first world war. He mostly wrote his poems to create an image of the unpleasant situation of war; to show people back home. The message in “Dulce et Decorum Est” - Owen mostly tried to present was the how untruthful the propaganda is and how it is all a “Lie”. The depth of antipathy towards war propaganda is stands out in this poem. Another image he has created in this poem is the loathsome life of a soldier in the trenches. Owen also wanted to show the pity of war (show war is not wonderful) using his poetry: “like old beggars under sacks”, “coughing like hag”.

In the first stanza the poem is showing the that the soldiers had shocking conditions. Owen describes the hell that is going on in the trenches: “blood-shod”, “all blind”, “Drunk with fatigue”. To let all this images to lock into the reader's mind Owen packs the first stanza with punctuations after the literal images. The use of these make the reader stop and think after the description. This effect created is showing that the writer want the reader to know the true conditions in the trenches of the war. These punctuation can also represent the movement of the soldiers - stopping, stuttering and slowing down. Another way war conditions is presented is by it being linear. This is
In stanza 3 of Dulce et Decorum Est we see that the person in the poem has lost hope for their friend who has just inhaled some gas. The change to a softer tone and use of pauses in lines 15 and 16 shows this: “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” This shows that the war was brutal because in many cases the death was not just from a gunshot - people had to face the tortuous gas as well. To show that the war is too much is presented in the final stanza with simile “like a devil’s sick of sin”. This is showing that the war has made the most fearsome creature sick it self by having too many deaths (something the devil