~DUCLE ET DECORUM EST~

Context of the poem:

This poem called Dulce et Decorum Est was written by a soldier called Wilfred Owen.
Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 and he died in 1918. This poem was written in the year
1914 which means that he died 4 years after the poem was written. This poem was
written in the trenches by this soldier. In this poem he is describing the gruesome image
of someone dying and suffocating from gas that was released into the trenches.

Tone of the poem:

Wilfred Owen had written this poem to express his anger and his disgust with a bitter and cold tone
because he talks about the violence that had been twisted and lied to young boys' heads to think it's a an
act of heroism to join the war. The rhythm structure of this poem is A,B,A,B,C,D,C,D, the poet had also
used a lot of imagery to describe the vivid image of the trenches as well as the conditions in war.

The perspective:
In this poem the poet (Wilfred Owen) is a soldier who has written this poem from the trenches that took
place in World War |. This poem is being addressed to some of the young boys
that have been lied to in terms of signing up to war. Many young boys at the
time thought it was an act of heroism to join the war, when it was all a
propaganda and that the result of being part of the war will result in death. In
addition, one of the other reasons why Wilfred Owen has written this poem is to
inform people about the kind of conditions that were experienced by soldiers on the front line in World
War I.

Poetic devices that can be found in this poem:

Alliteration: “Knocked-kneed”- This symbolises how the soldiers struggled to walk in the sludge and the
mud hat was present in the trenches and soldiers had to walk though without their boots.

Repetition: “Gas!GAS!”- Represents the urgency of the presence of gas which warns the troops to leave
the trenches or even put their helmet on to protect their lungs and their bodies from the toxic gas.

Onomatopoeia: “Gargling from the froth -corrupted lungs”- This onomatopoeias represent the gurgling
and the sound of the gas that is seeping into the trenches in which the soldiers are in. The poet himself
describes the gruesome image of the gas in the trenches and the specific sound it made.

“Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots”'-The soldier describes the feeling of immense fatigue to the
point where the soldier feels like he is deaf from all the sounds of the guns, the bombs and the gas.

“Coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge”- Here the soldier talks about how they are coughing like
old people due to the gases that were released in the trenches. In the addition, the soldier also talks
about the sludge that has built up in the trenches and they have to walk through that sludge without
boots or shoes.

Final thoughts about the poem:

In summary, in this poem one of the most effective pieces is the last four
lines of the poem since it shows how people who fought in the war thought
that they would be seen as heroes when most of them had died. In addition
the last four lines also show the heroism is fake and that the reality is that
the war is a very gruesome and horrifying place to be. Moreover, to
emphasise how much of a lie this was to the young people who signed up for
the war, the author has capitalised the L to symbolise how much of a lie the
signing up for war was to many young people which are referred to as children in this poem.