Wilfred Owen – Dulce Et Decorum Est
Watch the following clips:
1.
Siegfried Sassoon meets Wilfred Owen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzRR3jVgS0
2.
Writing war poetry – Sassoon and Owen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8-x3Ls0zC4
The above clips are from a film entitled: Regeneration based on a novel by Pat
Barker about the time when both poets were at a hospital in Edinburgh
3.
The actor Christopher Eccleston reads the Poem Dulce et Decorum est
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4cdRgIcB8
Dulce Et Decorum Est”
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in a fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
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This is from the Latin phrase “It
is sweet and right to die for one's
homeland."
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud,
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Vocabulary Worksheet.
 Read the poem again.
 Find the following words in the poem.
 Write, in the space provided, the meaning of the words as they are used
in the poem.
Example:
(line 3)
HAUNTING means GHOSTLY
(line 7)
FATIGUE
(line 9)
ECSTASY
(line 12)
FLOUNDERING
(line 16)
GUTTERING
(line 19)
WRITHING
(line 22)
GARGLING
(line 23)
OBSCENE
(line 23)
CUD
(line 25)
ZEST
(line 26)
ARDENT
Use a dictionary if you wish, but DO NOT SIMPLY COPY OUT THE
DEFINITION. Try to explain the word as the poet uses it.
The life of Wilfred Owen.
Wilfred Owen was born in Oswestry, England on March 18th, 1893. His family
was middle class with one sister and two brothers. His mother was a deeply
religious Calvinist who remained very close to Wilfred for most of his life. His
father was an independent, impatient man who enjoyed reading and music.
Both parents had a profound affect on Wilfred's life. Although he couldn't
afford a University education, he studied at Shrewsbury Technical School until
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1911, when he went to Dunsden, Oxfordshire, as a pupil and lay assistant to
the vicar.
In 1914, Owen went to live with the Legar family to tutor two Catholic boys in
France. When war broke out he was living the life of a cultivated, French
provincial society and on excellent terms with his employer, Mme. Legar.
Owen's first experience with the war is actually not on the battlefield, but in a
hospital where many casualties had recently arrived from the front lines.
There he witnessed several surgeries performed without anaesthesia of which
he wrote to his family. The letters are ruthless and self-important, but there is
a sharpness in the observation and a truthfulness we observe in his later
poems. He wanted to shock, but not just for the sake of shocking. At first he
had no desire to enter the service. He had not written or read poetry for quite
some time, and felt he should pursue business. However, by June 4th, 1916,
he was commissioned in the Manchester Regiment. At the end of the year, he
was sent to France.
For the next two years, his life was, what could only be described as hell.
However, it was these years in which his poetry rapidly matured. Gone were
the days of false poeticism and ghostly air, devoid of substance and
conviction. It should be explained that the environment of the war was very
much the same wherever you were sent-- a desolate landscape of trenches,
craters, barbed wire, ruined buildings, splintered trees, mud, and the corpses
of animals and men. Owen's poetry of this time was also very much filled with
protest and social criticism. At the time, there was a great gulf between the
fighting man and the civilian at home, and between the front-line and the
commanding officers. Wilfred often felt more compassion for those on the
other side of the barbed wire, shooting at him, rather than the men and
women at home profiting from or ignoring the war. The war poems reveal
Owen as a poet equipped in both technique and character alike.
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research project.
1.
Where was Wilfred
Owen born, brought up, and where did he die?
Was Wilfred Owen a believer in war? How do you know this?
Did Wilfred Owen ever go to war? If so, where did he fight?
What was his job?
Sketch a plan of the inside of a trench.
What were some of the symptoms of trench fever?
What caused Trench foot, and how did it have an effect on you
physically?
What caused rats to flock to the trenches? What did they live
on?
What was Shell Shock?
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9.
Dysentery was a very serious illness. What happened to you if
you caught it? How was it caught?
10.
What was included in the rations backpack? Could you live in
these conditions?
Complete these questions on lined paper and write a paragraph about the
conditions in the trenches. End the paragraph with your opinion. Were
these conditions good enough to live in? Could you actually put up with
these conditions?
Dulce Et Decorum Est. – Questions.
1. During the first eight lines of the poem, Wilfred Owen describes tired
and weary men. List the phrases which tell you the men are weary.
….bent double………like old beggars under sacks ……………..
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2. Explain what Wilfred Owen sees in his dreams. Read lines 15 and 16
of the poem.
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3. Highlight the examples of visual imagery.
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4. Highlight the examples of auditory imagery.
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5.Find examples of alliteration, simile, metaphor and onomatapoeia
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6. What does the title of the poem mean and why is it ironic?
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7. Annotate the rhyming scheme. What type of meter does Owen
predominantly use?
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8. Who is the narrator and who is he addressing?
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9. What tenses are used in the poem? Suggest a reason why the poet used
these?
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10.How would you describe the tone of the poem?
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11. What are the themes of the poem? Explain you answer.
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12. Overview of Poem: Is Wilfred Owen pro-war or anti-war? How do you
know?
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13. Compare: How is this poem different from Brooke’s “A Soldier”
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