1. INTRODUCTION

I am going to analyse the influences of the I World War in Owen’s poem: Dulce et decorum est.

First of all we have to pay attention in all the aspects that surrounds the poet: the war, his life, the poetry…

2. THE FIRST WORLD WAR

World War I, also known as WWI (abbreviation), the First World War, the Great War, and "The War to End All Wars," was a global military conflict that took place mostly in Europe between 1914 and 1918. It left millions dead and shaped the modern world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_World_War)

The Allied Powers, led by France, Russia, the British Empire, and later, Italy and the United States, defeated the Central Powers, led by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_World_War)

The war caused the disintegration of four empires: the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian. Germany lost its overseas empire, and new states such as Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Yugoslavia were created, and in the cases of Lithuania and Poland, recreated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_World_War)

World War I created a decisive break with the old world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, which was modified by the mid-19th century’s nationalistic revolutions. The outcomes of World War I would be important factors in the development of World War II 21 years later. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_World_War)

3. POETRY IN THIS TIME

More than any other conflict, the Great War inspired writers of all generations and classes, most notably among combatants.

The First World War produced some of the most gifted and progressive authors, poets and artists of a generation, each channelling their individual and collective experiences into their chosen art form.

The poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Charlotte Mew amongst others catches a truth we can remember and absorb in a consoling and illuminating way. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/poetry/wwone.shtml)

The term war poet came into currency during and after World War I. A number of poets writing in English had been soldiers, and had written about their experiences of war. Quite a number had died, most famously Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley. Others such as Siegfried Sassoon had survived, but made a reputation based on scathing poetry written from the disabused point of view of the trench soldier who had lost faith in his military superiors. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_I_poets)

At the time the term soldier poet was also used, but then dropped out of favour. The evolution of the concept was connected to a distinction drawn, between poets who were anti-war in attitude, and more traditional war poetry. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_I_poets)

4. WILFRED OWEN

Wilfred Owen is considered one of the great English poets of World War I, inspired by his experiences on the front lines in France to write about the morbid absurdity of war. (http://www.answers.com/topic/wilfred-owen)

Wilfred Owen was born the 18th of March 1893 in Oswestry (United Kingdom). He was the eldest of four children and brought up in the Anglican religion of the evangelical school. http://www.addingham.info/war/warsummary.htm

He was an English poet and soldier, regarded by some as the leading poet of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works - most of which remained unpublished until after his death - include Dulce Et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility, and Strange Meeting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen)

Owen is regarded by some as the leading poet of the First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare. His great friend, the contemporary poet Siegfried Sassoon had a profound effect on Owen's poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems (Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth) show direct results of Sassoon's influence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen)

With Sassoon's encouragement, Owen began writing naturalistic poems about the horrors of war and experimenting with poetic forms. In 1918 he returned to military service and in August was sent back to the front lines in France. He was killed by a German counter-attack on 4 November 1918, a mere five days before the signing of the armistice that ended the war. Most of his poems were published posthumously and, thanks in large part to Sassoon, Owen's reputation grew in the 1920s and '30s. His poems include "The Last Laugh" (which begins with the line "'Oh, Jesus Christ, I'm hit,' he said, and died") and "Dulce Et Decorum Est," in which he mocks "the old lie" that it's honorable to die for one's country. (http://www.answers.com/topic/wilfred-owen)

5. POEM: DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, 
Till on the haunting flares² we turned our backs 
And towards our distant rest³ 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 hoots⁴ 
Of tired, outstripped⁵ Five-Nines⁶ that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets⁸ just in time; 
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, 
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime⁹ . . . 
Dim, through the misty panes¹⁰ 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,¹¹ 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 cud¹² 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest¹³ 
To children ardent¹⁴ for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est 
Pro patria mori.¹⁵

^{(http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html)}

6. ANALYSIS

We are going to analise Wilfred Owen’s poem, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. The poem was written by Owen, an English soldier, in 1917 in response to a poem by Jessie Pope, a pro-war propagandistic.

Owe’s poem is based on a gas attack during World War I and is one of the many anti-war poems that were not published until after the war had ended. (http//:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_patria_mori - 18k)

The main theme in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is the horror in World War I. The poet describes terribly and magnificiently the gas attack suffered by a group of soldiers.

The poem is divided in four stanzas.

The first part Owen describes how the soldiers are trudging back to camp from battle. The soldiers are fatigued, tired....All of what he says is in order to show the cruelty of the war. It’s clear that the soldiers are the victims, so, Owen wants to show the cruel reality. I mean, Owen in this first stanza shows the calm before the storm of the gas attack.

The second stanza is in the contrast from the first. The adjective of the first is the calm, but the most appropiate adjective in the second is the storm. This stanza is full of action, he is describing the gas attack on the soldiers. When I read it I feel anxious, because the poet talks about one soldier, he is drowning. It makes that the reader see that war cruel and unjust. In this stanza, Owen reveals the horror of poison gas.

In the third stanza he is describing the dead soldier. This part has only two lines, it emphasises the personal reaction of the poet to these circumstances. The speaker of the poem invites the reader to view the suffering soldier.

In the fourth stanza (in my view the most important), the poet talks about the big lie: ‘Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori’. Through the died of the soldier he is showing the lie.

The poem, in particular the last stanza, is contradicting the tittle: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. War is shown not to be an honourable situation to die in, it is an experience not easily survived, nor easily forgotten.

The poet wants to show the reality of the war: They are dieing obscene and terrible deaths.

Owen wanted to throw the war in the face of the reader to illustrate how vile and inhumane was really is. He explains in the poem that people will encourage you to fight for your country, but, in reality, fighting for your country is unnecessary, you don’t have to dead.

At the end of the poem the reader can appreciate the irony between the truth of what happens at the trenches and the lie. The whole poem is contradictory to what was being spread with ‘Dulce et Decorum est’.

In Latin, the phrase ‘Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori’ means in English: ‘It is sweet and seemly to die for one’s country’. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est)

This poem rhymes well enough following ABAB, CDCD...

All exceptional poetry displays a good use of figurative language, imagery, and diction. Through these elements he clearly states his theme that war is terrible and horrorific.

This poem is very effective because of its excellent manipulation of the mechanical and emotional parts of the poem.

Words like ‘gas, gas, quick boys!’, ‘guttering’, ‘choking’ and ‘drowning’ not only show how the man is suffering, but that he is in terrible pain that no human being should endure.

There are metaphors, for example, in the first line ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’. This metaphor is comparing the soldier to the beggars and states that the soldiers are two times as crooked and bent as the beggars because they are so tired.

In the next line: ‘coughing like hags’. The soldiers are very tired and they sound as horrible as horrible as hags or witches.

These comparison illustrate the point so vividly that they increase the effectiveness of the poem. The most important means of developing the effectiveness of the poem is the graphic imagery.

The ugliness of war is described as low ‘like old beggars under sacks’, ‘blood-shod’, ‘coughing like hags’...So, through vivid imagery and compelling metaphors ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ gives the reader the exact feeling the author wanted.

Furthermore, the utilization of extremely graphic imagery adds even more to his argument: ‘come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs’. It shows the troops being brutally slaughtered very vividly, evoking images in the reader’s mind.

In the beginning of the poem the troops were portrayed as ‘drunk with fatigue’. With this you can imagine people dragging their boots through the mud, tripping over their own shadow.

So, the main point Owen tries to convey in this poem is the sheer horror of the war. The poet uses many techniques to show his feelings.

Owen says that the phrase ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is a lie, he wants that the reader feels what war is capable of. The poet shows the horrors.

7. CONCLUSION

The way Owen description of the image of the lone soldier dying awakeness the minds of the people who read the poem to the reality of war as being a terrifying way for young people to die, and that idea of patriotism and honour is the cause of such revolting circumstance.

It is presented through a series of images which are designed to destroy the notion of war being patriotic and honourable.

This poem is extremely effective as an anti-war poem, making war seem absolutely horrid and revolting, just as the author wanted it to.