Poetry Explication Essay #1: Sample Outline

I. Introduction

A. Attention Getter (question, quotation, fact)

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” has the meaning of “how sweet and honorable it is to die for one’s
country”. There are no sentences in the poem Dulce et Decorum Est. In poetry they are known as lines, and
stanzas as opposed to sentences and paragraphs. It is a 3 stanza poem, with 28 lines in total

B. Title, author and date or publication if known

Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, and published posthumously in
1920.

C. Clear thesis that names the key elements that will be analyzed in the poem (literary devices,

theme, tone, etc.)

The thesis of this anti-war poem is that war is degrading and horrible. It is anything but "sweet and fitting" (which
is what "dulce and decorum" means). People in English society might have been taught that it was sweet, fitting,
and glorious to do one's patriotic duty by fighting to protect one's homeland, but Owen tries to illustrate that this
sentiment is a lie.

Owen supports his thesis that war is terrible by using vivid imagery to illustrate how horrible and lacking in heroism
modern warfare really is. Imagery is description that uses the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight. He
uses elements of theme, tone, symbolism, with many other literary devices to convey his dark message.

II . Body #2

A. Meaning and Message

i. Surface Meaning (What’s happening in the poem)

Owen's war setting is World War I, the war which was going on in his lifetime. World War I was a terrible
bloodbath in which thousands and thousands of young lives were sacrificed in attempts to capture a few feet of
territory. Specifically, Owen describes a soldier who suffers a poison gas attack.

ii. Deeper Meaning (What is the poem really about)

A gas attacks adds to the misery. The men dive and fumble to put on their gas masks, but one doesn't get his on in
time. There is nothing brave, manly, or heroic about his fate, which the speaker describes without trying to hide
the horror:

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

The imagery of writhing eyes and frothing blood strips warfare of any heroism.

iii.# 3 Theme (What is the message of the poem?)

In "Dulce et Decorum Est," Owen rejects the commonly accepted idea that fighting for your country is a glorious
and heroic thing to do. To emphasize this message, Owen portrays the harsh realities of life on the battlefield. In
the first stanza, for example, he depicts soldiers as exhausted ("drunk with fatigue"), injured ("bent double"), and
generally very weary from war, like "old beggars."

In addition, Owen dispels the myth of war's glory by describing in detail the realities of a gas attack. His use of
imagery is designed to shock the reader by appealing to all of the senses. Owen talks about the "gargling" sound of
blood, for instance, and describes the "incurable sores" left behind.

In the final lines of the poem, Owen goes one step further by calling the idea of glory in battle an "old lie." His
damning indictment is now complete.

Death and horrors of war are the major themes of the poem. The poet incorporates these themes with the help of
appropriate imagery. He says that those who have lived these miserable moments will never glorify war. He
negates the glorious description of the war by presenting the brutal graphic realities of the battlefield. These
themes are foregrounded in powerful phrases such as “like old beggars under sacks,” “haunting flares”, “blood-
shod”,” guttering, choking, drowning” just to show that the poem depicts this universal thematic idea.

B.# 4 Tone

i. Who is speaking?

owen

ii. What is the tone of the speaker about the subject of the poem?

The tone of this poem is angry and critical. Owen’s own voice in this poem is bitter – perhaps partly fuelled by self-
recrimination for the suffering he could do nothing to alleviate.

iii. What is your proof? (quotes from the poem)

The soldiers in the opening lines are not sweet, noble, or heroic: they are "knock-kneed" and "coughing" like
"hags." They are weary, blind, lame, limping, fatigued.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge . . .

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

C. # Literary Devices

i. Simile/metaphor/personification etc.

The poem uses a lot of similes in order to create images of the soldiers and particularly of the one dying because of
chlorine gas. There is only one metaphor used in this poem. It is used in line seven of the poem, “Drunk with
fatigue; deaf even to the hoots.” It presents the physical state of the men. This is such a literal poem that Owen
hardly uses metaphor or personification.
 iii. What things are being compared in the similes and metaphors?

Simile is a figure of speech used to compare something with something else to describe an object or a person.
Owen has used many self-explanatory similes in this poem such as,” Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”,
“Knock-kneed, coughing like hags”, “like a man in fire or lime” and “like a devil’s sick of sin.”

‘like old beggars’ l.1. The soldiers are deprived of dignity and health like the elderly and dispossessed who are
reduced to begging for a living.

‘coughing like hags’ l.2. Owen compares the men to old, ugly women. They have lost their youth and with it their
potency and masculinity.

‘like a man in fire or lime’ l.12 Lime is a strong alkali which burns the skin as does flame; Owen is witnessing the
agony of a man on fire.

‘As under a green sea’ l.14. This evokes the reality of drowning. The ‘dim’ image seen through ‘thick green light’
may be the effect of the gas but may also refer to the fact that Owen is seeing the man through the eye-piece of
his own gas mask.

‘like a devil’s sick of sin’ l.20.The implications for pain and loathing here are dark. The man’s face is compared to
that of a devil, who is itself horrified by - and surfeited with - evil.

‘Obscene as cancer’ l.23. Owen presents us with a short brutal comparison. Like cancer the killer, the man’s blood
is an obscenity; something which should not to be seen. It is as offensive to the sight as is death by drowning in
poison gas.

‘bitter as the cud / Of vile incurable sores...’ l. 24. Owen uses a farming image (‘cud’ is the bitter tasting,
regurgitated, half-digested pasture chewed by cattle) that equates humans with animals, as well as conveying the
acidic burning effect of the man’s blood which has been degraded by the gas inhalation.

iv. Why were they used?

Dulce et Decorum Est is rich in similes whose function is to illustrate as graphically as possible the gory details of
the war and in particular a gas attack.

D. #5 Sound Effects

i. alliteration

By allusion we understand references to other past events, famous people or literary works,. Owen’s use of
repeated sounds picks up the alliteration of the title. ‘Dulce’ and ‘Decorum’ are the two contentious, abstract
nouns meaning ‘sweet’ and ‘honourable’, which he revisits in the final lines of the poem. Joined as they are by the
similar sounds of ‘et’ and ‘est’, they set a pattern for the alliteration which follows.

Each example emphasises the horror of the event:

soldiers are ‘Bent’ like ‘beggars’ l.1, who ‘cough’ and ‘curse’. l.2

the hum of the ‘m’ sounds of lines 5 and 6 sound like a grim lullaby -

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on .. All went lame

Owen’s use of alliteration builds as the pain worsens. In the ‘wagon’ l.18 Owen exhorts us to ‘watch the white eyes
writhing l.19 (the last ‘w’ being an example of eye-rhyme rather than audible). Finally, we are asked to envisage
‘vile incurable sores on innocent tongues’ l.24. This final alliteration underlines the startling contrast between the
‘incurable’ nature of the injury and the ‘innocence’ of the victim.
 ii. #6 Rhyme scheme

The heaviness and misery of the men is reflected in the slightly dull and routine ab ab rhyme-scheme. The ‘udge’
sound in English is frequently associated with thickness and limited mobility (l.2,4) just as the ‘umble’ cluster
connotes a lack of precision (l.9,11). The long ‘ing’ rhymes also have the effect of slow motion, replicating the
horror of slow drowning.

In the fourth stanza, the grim images of ‘blood’ and ‘cud’ (the bitter tasting, regurgitated, half-digested pasture
chewed by cattle) are emphasized both by their rhyme and their delayed position at the end of their respective
lines (21 and 23). By rhyming ‘glory’( l.26) with ‘mori’ (Latin for ‘to die’) (l.28) Owen makes a point of contrast and
irony from the two words which seem to be so much at odds with each other.

The whole poem follows the ABAB, CDCD rhyme scheme in iambic pentameter.

Iambic Pentameter: It is a type of meter consisting of five iambs. The poem comprises iambic pentameter such as,
“Bent Double, like old beggars under.”

iii. Why were they used?

And “Dulce et Decorum Est” is also hostile to the form’s traditional rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme of “Dulce et
Decorum Est” is, of course, ababcdcd, etc. (the traditional pattern of an English sonnet prior to the turn), but Owen
does not complete the turn by ending on a rhyming couplet. Instead, he repeats the sonnet’s rhyme scheme prior
to the turn in a mimesis of the speaker’s recurring nightmare. Owen belligerently refuses to engage with this
aspect of the sonnet form even to further emphasize his horror at the war.

E. #7 Symbolism

i. Explain the symbols and what they represent

One of Owen's most powerful images in "Dulce et Decorum est" is of drowning:

13 Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

14 As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

The narrator is describing, of course, the soldier who has been unable to don his gas mask in time and has ingested
the mustard gas. What makes this image so powerful is that it accurately describes the most common and fatal
results of mustard gas. The narrator's reference to "misty panes and thick green light" describes him looking at the
victim's eyes through the thick glass panes of the gas mask, which are tinted green "as under a green sea."
Mustard gas, once it gets into the lungs, burns the tissue, which then releases blood and water, and the victim
literally drowns in his own bodily fluids. Drowning, in this context, is both metaphor and reality

III #8 Conclusion

A. Restate your thesis in different words

Dulce est… Is probably one of the most famous war poems. Summarize your main points

As this poem is written in the context of war, the poet describes the gruesome experiences of war. As a soldier in
the WW1, he experienced the sufferings of the war and its pains. By depicting the death and destruction caused by
the war, he declares that war is not a heroic deed. Many innocent souls are lost for the sake of their country. He
considers war as a devil’s work that brings violence, destruction, and ruination to the people.

B. Relate the poem to broader themes in life. What can we learn from this poem?

What is fascinating about this poem is that in so many ways it takes our expectations of soldiers and war and
completely reverses them. We would imagine a soldier to die in glory whilst battling their opponent in hand-to-
hand conflict or making a brave assault. In this poem, the casualty dies when they are walking away from enemy
lines and they die without even seeing their enemy. In addition, as the imagery makes clear, he dies in a way that is
terrible and grotesque and very violent.