Introduction

The poem I am going to analyse is a poem by Wilfred Owen written in 1917 and published in 1921.(1) The subject of this poem is the war. Owen think that war could not be described in a heroic, idealized manner, but should be treated with realism that could describe the impact warfare has on human lives.(2)

“Dulce Et Decorum Est”

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.(4)

Analysis

This is a 28-lined poem divided in four stanzas of iambic pentameter, each of this stanzas have an irregular number of verses. The rhyme scheme is: ABAB, CDCD, … The poem is narrated in first person, and because of this it is thought that this poem is told by the person of Owen, he is telling us the horrors of war in first person, and with the vocabulary Owen can set us in this battle.

Interpretation of the poem

The title of the poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is a Latin phrase taken from an Ode by Horace and means “it is sweet and honourable”. People understood and quoted this Latin sentence at the beginning of the First World War.(5)

The poem begins with a cruel description of war, of the bad conditions of soldiers “coughing like hags” (verse 2), and there is also a description of the war-weary soldiers marching “through sludge” (verse 2), “blood-shod” (verse 6) and “Drunk with fatigue” (verse 7).

Soldiers are “all blind” (verse 6) and “deaf even to the hoots / Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (verses 7 and 8) because they did not want to see the disasters of the war, soldiers did not want to hear the noise made by the shells dropping everywhere, and they try to struggle away from the scene of battle.

The second stanza starts quickly, in the first verses of this stanza things happened very quickly: “GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!” (verse 9), gas shells begin to fall, and the soldiers put on their gas masks as quickly as they can. In the rush, one man drops his mask, and the narrator sees the man “yelling out and stumbling / And floundering like a man in fire or lime” (verses 11 and 12).

The narrator sees the soldier drowning: “I saw him drowning” (verse 14), this is the first time the author uses the first person singular pronoun. In the first stanza the author uses “we” (verses 2 and 3), and “our” (verses 3 and 4), but now he uses “I”, by this, the narrator is telling us that he was there directly, that he saw this man and probably nobody else saw this man. Then the two verses of the third stanza are related with this personal image, because this image allows Owen’s thoughts and dreams, forcing him to revive the nightmare again and again.

In the final stanza, the narrator addresses the readers of his poem and makes them think about the cruelty of war. The narrator says that if we, as readers, could see “the white eyes writhing in his face” (verse 19), “His hanging face” (verse 20), “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” (verses 21 and 22), we would think over and stop sending young men to war.

With the words “My friend” (verse 25) the narrator is addressing the reader, but in a closer manner. This use of affective language causes the reader to get on well with the narrator.(6) He is treating the reader as a friend, and he is going to give to his friend a good advice because of his bad experience at war.

The advice is not to tell enthusiastic children the “old Lie” (verse 27) “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” (verses 27 and 28), again he uses this words that are used in the title of the poem, but now Owen adds the next sentence in the original Horace’s Ode: “Pro patria mori”, all the Latin sentence means: Sweet and honourable it is, to die for the fatherland.

In the last stanza Owen is praying, he is asking people not to send their children to war because of fatherland, because of their country, because they probably die, since the territory of a war is a dangerous territory for a person.

Conclusion

This poem is one of the most important Wilfred Owen’s poems. The originality and the force of its language, the passionate nature of the indignation the poem express, this is a mixture of harsh realism and horror, all these make this poem one of the best poems written by Wilfred Owen.(7)

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_Est (15th March)

(2) http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/owen-wilfred (20th March)

(3) http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/owen-wilfred (20th March)

(4) http://iraqi-signor.blogspot.com/2006/10/dulce-et-decorum-est.html (15th March)

(5) http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html (15th March)

(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_Est (15th March)

(7) C. Day Lewis: The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. A new directions book (1963).

Bibliography

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_Est. (15th March). Homepage: http://wikipedia.org.

- http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/owen-wilfred. (20th March). Homepage: http://www.enotes.com

- http://iraqi-signor.blogspot.com/2006/10/dulce-et-decorum-est.html. (15th March) Homepage: http://iraqi-signor.blogspot.com

- http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html. (15th March)Homepage: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk

- C. Day Lewis: The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. A new directions book (1963)