Tone Of Dulce Et Decorum Est

Ashleigh Waters
Poetry 2027
Josef Horáček
21 November 2011

Dulce Et Decorum Est

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen is a war poem written to show the cruel reality of war. Owen uses his own experience of World War I in his poetry in order to depict the true horror of warfare. During the war, Owen was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital after suffering shell shock. He then wrote poetry as a way to cope with the horrific memories of the war. In the poem, Owen uses very personal memories and vivid imagery to try to convince others to stop enlisting and supporting the war. Written whilst receiving treatment for shell shock in Craiglockart, “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a bitter response to Owen's first hand experience of war and an
This is reinforced by other lines in the first stanza such as “All went lame; all blind” and “And towards our distant rest began to trudge”. This negative tone, which is brought about by the by the emotional language used (like “old” and “trudge”), creates a gloomy scene. “Dulce et Decorum est” is a satirical poem about a Latin saying meaning “how sweet and fitting it is”. Through this poem Owen tries to show readers this saying is a lie, and that war is not as glorious as many people make it out to
The first line of this stanza forms the future conditional; perhaps Owen, although hopeful, realizes that the intended recipient of the poem will never dream of this terrible scene. Owen uses alliteration to draw the attention of the reader, in the line "And watch the white eyes writhing in his face," which creates a stark and confronting image within the reader's mind. Further, in "his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" it is through the use of simile the poet arouses the sympathy of the responder as they witness the grotesque nature of such a death. This line also uses alliteration to create a hissing sound produced by the harsh ‘s’ sound. The hissing sound, almost snake like, adds to the harshness of the poem. Owen's only hope is that the powerful but ugly imagery in this section of the poem will allow them an explicit insight into the horrors of modern warfare.
Owen cleverly links the burning effects of the gas on the young man's mouth with the lies told by those like Jessie Pope in the poem "Who's For The Game". The saying Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori was familiar to most during this period, it means “it is sweet and just to die for one's country”. Taken from the opening lines of an Ode by Horace, it was frequently used to urge young men to enlist. It is the serving up of spewed out, second hand patriotism from a previous era, when war was considered valiant