‘Dulce et Decorum Est’

by Wilfred Owen
Ms Sweeney
3rd Year Poetry
Line by Line Summary

 Line 1: The speaker begins with a description of soldiers, bent under the weight of their packs like
beggars.
 Line 2: Their knees unsteady, coughing like poor and sick old women, and struggling miserably
through a muddy landscape.
 Line 3: They turn away from the light flares (A German tactic of briefly lighting up the area in
order to spot and kill British soldiers.
 Line 4: And begin to march towards their distant camp.
 Line 5: The men are so tired that they seem to be sleeping as they walk.
 Line 6: Many have lost their boots, yet continue on despite their bare and bleeding feet.
 Line 7: The soldiers are so worn out that they are essentially disabled; they done see anything at all,
they are tired to the point of feeling drunk and
 Line 8: Don’t even notice the sound of the dangerous poisonous gas shells.
Line by Line Summary

 Line 9: Somebody cries out an urgent warning about the poison gas, and
 Line 10: The soldiers fumble with their gas masks, getting them on just in time.
 Line 11: One man however is left yelling and struggling, unable to get his mask on.
 Line 12: The speaker describes this man as looking like someone caught in a fire or lime
(ancient chemical weapon used to effectively blind opponents).
 Line 13+14: The speaker then compares the scene-through the panes of his gas mask and
with the poison gas filling the air- compared to being underwater and imagines the soldier
is drowning.
 Line 15+16: The speaker jumps from the past moment of the gas attack to a present
moment sometime afterward, and describes a recurring dream that he cant escape, in
which the dying soldier races toward him in agony.
Line by Line Summary

 Line 17: The speaker directly addresses the audience, suggesting that if readers could
experience their own such suffocating dreams.
 Line 18: Marching behind a wagon in which the other men have placed the dying soldier.
 Line 19: Seeing the writhing of the dying soldiers eyes in an otherwise slack and wrecked
face.
 Line 20-22: Hearing him cough up blood from his ruined lungs at every bump in the path.
 Line 23: A sight the speaker compares to the horror of cancer and other diseases that
ravage even the innocent.
 Line 24-27: He would not so eagerly tell children, hungry for a sense of heroism, the old
lie that ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country’
Key Quotes Stanza 1

 ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’

 ‘Coughing like hags’
 ‘Men marched asleep’
 ‘Many had lost their boots, but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind’
 ‘Drunk with Fatigue’
Key Quotes Stanza 2

 ‘Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling’

 ‘Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time’
 ‘Someone was yelling out and stumbling’
 ‘And flound’ring like a man in fire’
 ‘misty panes’
 ‘Under a green sea, I saw him drowning’
Key Quotes Stanza 3

 ‘some smothering dreams, you too could pace’

 ‘watch the white eyes writhing in his face’
 ‘If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs’
 ‘Obscene as cancer’
 ‘Incurable sores on innocent tongues’
 ‘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’
YouTube Video

 Analysis of Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen

 https://youtu.be/PUBmoRuMwvk

 Another perspective.

 Mr. Beasley
Exam Question ‘English 2019 Unseen Poem’

‘ Poems often explore themes that challenge us to stop and think’

 (A) Select a poem you have studied and explain why a theme in this poem challenged you
to stop and think. Use the poem to support your response.

 (B) Do you think the poet uses language effectively in your chosen poem? Explain your
answer, supporting your response with suitable quotation from the poem.