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 still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in 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,
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.
Stanza One
• Meaning: Stanza 1 begins with a description of the shocking
condition of a group of soldiers retreating from the battle field.
Owen is the observer of another incident of misery and the horror
of trench warfare. The detail used to describe the men’s wretched
state is in marked contrast to the glorified image of war
suggested by the title. There is nothing military about the soldiers
in this description. The men are so exhausted they fail to notice a
gas shell falling close by. Note how the description of the men
builds to suggest how they have been totally degraded and
demoralised by war.
• Style: Stanza 1 is heavily punctuated, slowing the pace of the
opening of the poem to suggest the slow, staggering movements
of the tired soldiers.
Dramatic opening through
Stanza 1 Analysis
use of power visual image. Pain and moving
awkwardly. Not fit, healthy and glorious like
propaganda posters showed.
Simile undermines stereotypes
image of soldiers as young and fit.
Suggests they are filthy and weak.
• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Alliteration
for emphasis,
a hard,
staccato
sound to
echo the
harsh mood
of theses
lines and
soldier’s
misery. It
stresses echo
the brutality
of the
soldiers’
destruction,
their
transformatio
n from
healthy
young men
into
‘beggars’ and
‘hags’.
.
Soldiers have lost weight due to malnutrition
– uniform hanging off them.
Simile conveys how men have
become unrecognisable, their
masculinity and youth destroyed.
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on
Compares men to sick women showing how they
are unrecognisable; they have lost their masculinity, Onomatopoeia
implies how heavy
youth, health and are now outcasts to society.
difficult the
the haunting flares we turned our backs, and
ground
is to cross
Personification suggests death is
haunting the men. They live in
peril. It is a constant presence
wherever they go; they have no rest.
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Word choice
emphasises
how exhausted and
depressed
the men feel.
Stanza One Analysis Continued:
•
‘Sacks, Backs, Hags’ - Owen unifies the first three lines of the poem through
his use of assonance. The short, staccato ‘a’s suggest the hacking sound of the
solder’s coughing.
•
‘Cursed’ - Look at the use of the word 'cursed.' Owen does not say 'struggled',
or 'marched' or any other word suggesting movement: he uses a word that
describes a way of speaking, usually violent and unsophisticated, often used in
moments of anger, or passion, or grief, or distress. We not only see the
movement, but we sense the state of mind behind it, and almost hear the men's
march like a soundtrack to the next lines of the poem.
•
Opening lines of the poem describes the wretched physical state of the
soldiers-conveys how the have been transformed by war.
•
Opening- immediate impact on reader-subverts stereotype of soldier as
romantic hero.
Metaphor conveys the men’s
exhaustion, they are so tired they
are barely aware of what they’re
doing or their surroundings.
Stanza One Analysis Continued:
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
Repetition of ‘all’
emphasises
every man suffered.
The poor physical state of the men is clear, their feet
are caked in mud and blood. The phrase has echoes of
‘bloodshed’. Tone is bitter and sarcastic.
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Metaphor suggests how the men are so weary they
are staggering and uncoordinated, possibly
Connotations of pain and suffering.
stumbling or slurring their words.
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Owen develops his description of the soldiers’
poor physical condition by conveying how
they are so exhausted they are unaware they
are under attack.
Onomatopoeia suggests a
warning sound but also that
the shells are mocking the
men.
Stanza One Analysis Continued:
•
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood shod. All went lame, all blind;”
•
In this, and the next two lines, Owen deploys the caesura to pile detail
upon detail, each of the six short phrases a sharper and sharper
declination into deprivation. The first three describe the men's physical
appearance, the last three a total destruction of physical propulsion and
perception: lame, blind, drunk and deaf.
•
It is as if the speaker is deliberately smashing the lyrical music of the
full line to catalogue the death of the body, sense by sense. Yet the
regularity of the placing of the caesura, in the middle of each line, also
drives home the formality of the men's marching, the plodding
regularity of left after right, left after right.
Series of short exclamations
conveys panic - a sudden
contrast to verse 1.
•
Stanza Two Analysis
Words implies madness.
This is what is in Owen’s mind at this point.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
Transferred epithet conveys
how the men struggle to put
on their gas masks in time.
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling Simile emphasises the pain the
Word choice tells us how the man is thrashing
about in agony and distress as it burns his skin
and enters his lungs.
man is in- as if he was being
burned alive. The image also has
connotations of hell.
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. —
An extended metaphor
describes the man choking
to death- unable to breathe,
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, he falls about. Owen
describes having flashbacks
to the death of his comrade
highlighting how the impact
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
of war lasts over many
years and across
‘Green sea’ is green gas swirling about. Gas literally caused
them to drown in their own blood so the word is appropriate. generations.
Reader sees event from Owen’s perspective
- makes poem more immediate and emotive
Stanza Two Analysis.
• “Gas! Gas!”
• This line begins with two disruptions; the disruption of the
rhythm, with the succession of the four, short, sharp,
stressed syllables and the disruption of the telling voice,
with the cry of alarm reported in direct speech. So many
short, stressed syllables one after the other act like a fast,
dramatic cut in a movie: they alert us to a change of pace, a
change of situation, a heightening of tension, the
imminence of a traumatic event.
Stanza Three Analysis
• Stanza three is structured as two lines only. This indicates a shift
in time as the narrator relates how many years after the war he
still recalls this traumatic event. This emphasizes how the impact
of war is felt for many years, and many generations.
Conveys a sense of guilt
that he can do nothing to
help his friend.
Death is described in clinical detail.
• In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
These words continue the
metaphor introduced in Stanza
two and helps us picture the man
falling about, desperately trying
to draw breathe.
Onomatopoeia
imitates the
soldier’s attempts
to draw breath.
‘Guttering’ refers to a candle spitting
before it goes out, suggesting coughing
and spluttering and symbolising the
young man’s life being extinguished.
Stanza Four.
• Meaning and tone: In Stanza four the poet changes his
narrative perspective as he addresses the reader directly.
We are asked to consider our personal response to the
atrocities of war and confront the deceit and hypocrisy
of pro war propaganda. The tone in the final lines is
bitter and angry. Owen uses the patriotic slogan in
darkly ironic way to expose the dishonesty of
romanticised portrayals of war in light of the horrific
account of soldiers experiences he has described.
Stanza Four Analysis
Poet feels suffocated and disturbed by memories.
Directly addresses
reader.‘Pace behind’
suggests funeral
procession.
Alliteration If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
emphasises
the hideous
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
sight of the
Emotive word choice
man
suffering. And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, implies soldiers are
treated with no respect as
Eyes rolling as
he’s in pain.
if disposable.
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
Owen
directly
addresses
the reader,
forcing
them, to
imagine
the horror
of
watching
the young
soldier
dying in
agony.
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Simile conveys how even
Satan would be disgusted
by this sight.
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Cud is brown substance cows regurgitate.
The gas tastes bitter and causes the man to bring
up a brown substance as he coughs up his own
lungs.
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
Contrast in this simile highlights how youth
and innocence are destroyed by war.
Word choice
suggests
sudden
movementimplies pain the
man
suffers.
Stanza 4 Analysis
This means
great
enthusiasm
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
Owen ends
the poem
with a
direct
address to
the reader,
asking them
to
reconsider
the truth of
patriotic
tales of war.
Owen here
To children ardent for some desperate glory,directly refers
to propaganda
that portrays
war as a heroic
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
adventure
Owen ends the poem with a
damning criticism of war and
Pro patria mori.
those who support it. He makes
Means - Is it right and fitting to die
it clear that anyone who knew
for your country? It is a quote from
the truth of war could not view it
the Latin poet, Horace.Repetition of
as
war as an act of heroic patriotism.
title makes us
He
employs an ironic tone here to
reconsider our attitude to war
create
an anti-war feeling.
in light of what the poem
has revealed.
Is this right? Is this fitting?
• With mustard gas the effects did not become apparent for
up to twelve hours. But then it began to rot the body,
within and without.
• The skin blistered, the eyes became extremely painful and
nausea and vomiting began.
• Worse, the gas attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off
the mucus membrane.
• The pain was almost beyond endurance and most victims
had to be strapped to their beds.
• Death took up to four or five weeks.
Is this right? Is this fitting?
• ‘I wish those people who write so glibly about this being
a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going
on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may
mean, could see a case -to say nothing of ten cases--of
mustard gas in its early stages -could see the poor things
burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured
suppurating blisters, with blind eyes . . . all sticky and
stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with
voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are
closing and they know they will choke.’
For Practice: Essay Questions
are on the next page.
Answers to questions on Poetry should refer to the text and to such relevant features
as word choice, tone, imagery, structure, content, rhythm, rhyme, theme, sound,
ideas . . .
1. Choose a poem in which the poet creates a particular mood or atmosphere.
Show how the poet creates this mood or atmosphere by his or her choice of subject
matter and use of poetic techniques.
2. Choose a poem which arouses strong emotion in you.
Describe how you feel about the poem, and explain how the poet leads you to feel this
way.
3. Choose a poem which could be considered as having a powerful message.
Show how the poet effectively conveys this message through his or her use of poetic
techniques.
4. Choose a poem which features an encounter or an incident.
By referring to appropriate techniques, show how the poet’s development of the
encounter or incident leads you to a deeper understanding of the poem’s central
concerns