HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Tuesday 16th January 1917
My own sweet Mother,
I am sorry you have had about 5 days letterless. I hope you had
my two letters 'posted' since you wrote your last, which I received
tonight. I am bitterly disappointed that I never got one of yours.
I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last 4 days. I
have suffered seventh hell.
I have not been at the front.
I have been in front of it.
I held an advanced post, that is, a 'dug-out' in the middle of No
Man's Land.
Those fifty hours were the agony of my happy life.
Every ten minutes on Sunday afternoon seemed an hour.
I nearly broke down and let myself drown in the water that was
now slowly rising over my knees.
Towards 6 o'clock, when, I suppose, you would be going to church,
the shelling grew less intense and less accurate: so that I was
mercifully helped to do my duty and crawl, wade, climb and
flounder over No Man's Land to visit my other post.
I am now as well, I suppose, as ever.
I allow myself to tell you all these things because I am never going
back to this awful post.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Getting to Know Your Poet
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 1893 - 1918
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Born Oswestry, Shropshire. Educated at Birkenhead Institute and
Shrewsbury Technical College.
 From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and
immersed himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats
and Shelley. He wrote almost no poetry of importance until he
saw action in France in 1917.
Deeply attached to his mother to whom most of his 664 letters are addressed.
(She saved every one.)
A committed Christian and became lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near
Reading 1911-1913 – teaching Bible classes and leading prayer meetings – as
well as visiting parishioners and helping in other ways.
Pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier and volunteered on 21st
October 1915. He spent the last day of 1916 in a tent in France joining the
Second Manchesters. He was full of boyish high spirits at being a soldier.
Experienced "sleeping" 70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun which fired every minute
or so and wading miles along trenches two feet deep in water.
Experienced gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead; his
sentry was blinded, his company then slept out in deep snow and intense frost till
the end of January. That month was a profound shock for him: he now understood
the meaning of war.
Escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but he saw a good deal of front-line
action: he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock. At Craiglockhart,
the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him
to develop his war poetry.
Won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a
number of Germans in October 1918
Got shot at and killed on 4th November 1918 near the village of Ors. The news of
his death reached his parents home as the
Armistice bells were ringing on 11
November.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Poetry
‘Dulce et Decorum Est'1 by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest3 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 hoots4
Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.
Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .
Dim, through the misty panes10 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,11 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,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13
To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.15
5
10
15
20
25
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Note
1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by
Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First
World War. They mean "It is sweet and right."
2. rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets
in the area between the front lines.
3. a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or
longer.
4. the noise made by the shells rushing through the air.
5. outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now
falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle.
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells.
7. poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The
filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned.
8. the early name for gas masks.
9. a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue.
10. the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks.
11. probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter,
referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like
stuttering and partly like gurgling.
12. normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was
issuing from the soldier's mouth.
13. high zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea.
14. Keen.
15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In
other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Poetry Worksheet
Name: __________________________ Index No.: ______
Class: ______
Date: ______________
1. Title - Study the title of the poem. What is the significance of the title?
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2. Paraphrase – Paraphrase the poem (translate the poem into your own words).
Write each phrase in your own words, as a way to try to understand the literal
meaning of the poem.
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
3a. Connotation – What meaning does the poem have beyond the literal meaning?
Fill in the chart below using literary devices found in the poem. Add author’s
purpose for using each element.
Textual quote using element
Purpose
Tone/s ( Shifts)
Imagery
Point of View
Symbolism
Figurative
Language
(Similes,
metaphors, and
personification)
Sound Devices
(Alliteration,
onomatopoeia,
assonance,
consonance,
and rhyme)
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
6
HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Theme
Personal
Response
( societal,
local ,global
issue )
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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HWA CHONG INSTITUTION
High School Section
Literature in English
Help Section
Common Themes in War Poetry
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Futility of War
Unnecessary Death
Brutality of War
Patriotic Responsibility
Love Destroyed by War
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War Guilt
Suffering of War Victims
Sacrifice for War
Aftermath of War
Words to Use to Indicate Purpose of Poetic Devices
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery_02.shtml
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page
krisontan/hs/hci/2009
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