Poetry Explication (30 points)
An explication is a short essay in which you analyze the important characteristics of a
poem. For this assignment, your explication will be six paragraphs. Here is how you will
structure each paragraph:
1. Paragraph One—Write a summary of the poem. Mention important parts of it.
What is the poem about? What is the theme of the poem?
2. Paragraph Two—Write an analysis of the punctuation used in the poem. Discuss the
poet’s use of commas, periods, colons/semicolons, and any other punctuation. Mention
which lines these punctuation marks are used in, and explain how the punctuation
affects the meaning of the poem.
3. Paragraph Three—Explain who the speaker of the poem is. Is it the poet him/herself,
or another person? What is so significant about the speaker?
4. Paragraph Four—Identify and explain all the literary devices used in the poem. This
could include similes, metaphors, oxymorons, onomatopoeia, personification,
alliteration, assonance, or other figures of speech. Explain how these literary devices
affect the meaning of the poem.
5. Paragraph Five—Describe the meter and rhyme scheme of the poem. Also identify
how many stanzas are in the poem, and explain why you think the poet divided the
stanzas up the way he/she did. If there is no meter/rhyme scheme, mention this, and
explain how this lack of meter/rhyme scheme affects the poem.
6. Paragraph Six—This is your conclusion, where you get to provide your opinion of the
poem. You also need to summarize the theme of the poem and what it means to you
personally.
NOTE: Anytime you make a reference to something in the poem, use line numbers to
identify it.
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.
* Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is Latin for “How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.”
“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a narrative poem about a surprise gas attack striking a group of
exhausted soldiers. Owen uses vivid language to emphasize how worn out the soldiers are. The
soldiers, “like old beggars under sacks,” are “cursing” (not marching) toward a “distant rest.” The
second stanza begins with an exclamation “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” interrupting the speaker’s
description of the march just as the surprise gas attack does. The soldiers frantically put on their gas
masks, “fumbling” with the “clumsy helmets.” Sadly, though, one man cannot put on his mask in time,
and the other men must watch as he dies helplessly. This episode is a segue into Owen’s ultimate
message in the last stanza—that nationalistic attitudes such as fighting and dying for one’s country are
lies. Anyone who could experience such horrific scenes as what he describes would not tell children
how glorious it is to go to war for one’s country.
Owen uses a variety of punctuation in this poem to help set the pace for the reader, and to
separate the many vivid, grotesque images. The poem contains seven periods—four in the first stanza,
and one in each of the three remaining stanzas. Just as in prose writing, the periods separate the poem
into separate, albeit complex, sentences. The only simple sentence in the poem is in line 5—“Men
marched asleep.” However, even this discreet thought is positioned within a detailed stanza of vivid
imagery. Individual images are separated by commas and semicolons. The first stanza alone contains a
plethora of such images (bent double, knock-kneed, blood-shod, all blind, drunk with fatigue). The
second stanza begins with an exclamation (“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!”). This exclamation interrupts the
first stanza’s ruminations on the long march, which complements the interruption of the actual surprise
attack. Punctuation in the second stanza (commas in lines 9, 13, and 14, a semicolon in line 10, and an
ellipsis in line 12) separates the soldiers’ reaction to the attack. The plethora of commas in the
remaining two stanzas continues to separate discreet images. The overall impression is that warfare is
unfathomably horrific, and that one who has truly experienced these macabre scenes would denounce a
zealous attitude toward war.
The speaker of the poem is undoubtedly Owen himself. As a lieutenant in World War I, he must
surely have experienced the horrors described in the poem. He assumes a first person perspective as he
tells his story about the surprise gas attack during a miserable march (“We cursed though sludge”). As
well, he ends the poem with a warning that there is nothing glorious about war, even though the young
may think there is. The final stanza takes a rather cynical tone. It ends with the assumption that there is
some “old lie” about warfare that, presumably, most people accept. The experiences described in the
poem are used as evidence to prove how inglorious war truly is. The speaker clearly would not be able
to get his message across had he not experienced the horrors of war as Owen did.
Owen deploys several similes in his poetic treatise against the glorification of war. The first
stanza contains two similes, “like old beggars under sacks” (line 1) and “coughing like hags” (line 2).
These similes use strong imagery to portray the misery of the soldiers’ plight. The second stanza
contains two similes as well: “flound’ring like a man in fire or lime” (line 12) and “as under a green sea”
(line 14). These similes describe the suffering of the soldier who could not put on his gas mask in time.
“Flound’ring” describes the man in his death throes, the nerve gas ravaging his body. As well, the gas
used in World War I had a greenish appearance to it. As the man struggles to breathe, the poem conveys
the idea that he might as well be drowning in the (green) sea, since he cannot breathe the air. Owen’s
final stanza—his warning to the audience—contains three more similes. Line 20 describes the horrid
face of the dead man “like a devil’s sick of sin.” This man was indeed sickened and killed by the sin of
chemical warfare. Lines 23 and 24 use the similes “obscene as cancer” and “bitter as the cud of vile,
incurable sores” to describe the corpse. These similes complement the rest of the poem’s strong, dark
imagery.
The entire poem follows an alternating rhyme scheme along the pattern of a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d
throughout its 28 lines. Although it is not consistent, the meter of the poem is iambic pentameter. Some
lines are more than ten syllables, but this slight departure from the meter is less confining, and it keeps
the rhythm of the poem interesting. The poem is four stanzas. The first stanza (lines 1—8) describes
the soldiers’ march. The second stanza (lines 9—14) describes the surprise gas attack. The third stanza
is only two lines (15—16). However, this stanza is perhaps the most emotionally charged stanza of the
poem, not only for its striking brevity, but also for the gravity of the image it conveys. Here, Owen tells
us that he sees the dying soldier often in his dreams, and every time, the soldier is in his final, agonizing
death throes. The last stanza (lines 17—28), is Owen’s position, from experience, that war is nothing to
glorify. The preceding stanzas are the strong evidence of his convictions.
Young men tend to have an overly romantic perspective of warfare. Many see war as an
opportunity to be a hero and to gain fame, fortune, and honor. Nations use young men’s zeal to entice
them into fighting wars in the name of their country. It is not until one experiences the ravages of war
first hand that one sees how unrealistic this attitude is. Even those of us who are aware that war is
nothing to glorify still do not understand the horrors of war as well as a soldier. “Dulce et Decorum Est”
is intended to be a reality check for everyone who has not experienced war first hand. Owen uses many
disturbing images to show us how there is no glory in fighting, nor is there any glory in dying a violent
death. As well, his poem conveys the message that the idea of dying for one’s country is completely
overrated, and that such nationalistic attitudes represent a false, warped outlook on the world.