Anthem and Dulce Et Decorum Est

Anthem and Dulce Et Decorum Est

  • Submitted By: schultzy92
  • Date Submitted: 03/21/2010 5:18 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 411
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 1

Throughout Wilfred Owens’s 2 poem’s “Anthem for doomed youth” and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” Owen expresses many themes. These include the façade/lie of fighting for your country, the horrific deaths, horrors and pity of war, the inhumanity and indignity in the slaughter, and youth and unnecessary death.
In Anthem for Doomed Youth Wilfred expresses themes such as unnecessary Deaths of young soldiers and mass slaughter in the very first line of the poem
“What passing bells for these die as cattle?”
The soldiers being cattle, rounded up and slaughtered like they don’t have thoughts and that they are not a loss at all.
Wilfred also explores the lack of funerals throughout the poem with lines such as
“No Mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;” and “what candles may be held to speed them all”
The first quote meaning the soldiers don’t get any prayers as there are more important things to do like kill the guys who are currently trying to kill you.
The second quote meaning they don’t get all the bells and candles of a normal funeral, your just left there to rot.
The soldiers were not allowed to show emotion for a number of reasons which is said in “Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes”
The Title Say’s that Owen was trying to explain That there were many youth’s in the war, most of which died.
In Dulce Et Decorum Est Owen explored the façade/lie of fighting for your country in the line “If in some smothering Dreams you too could pace” meaning you would only dream of what they did and that the war isn’t as bright and cool as it was made out to be.
He explored the exhaustion and fatigue of the soldiers in the line “Bent Double like old beggars” meaning even though they were practically dying of fatigue that had to keep on going alert as always.
The horrific deaths in the war were brought up through the poem in lines such as “the white eyes writhing in his face” and “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” meaning that it...

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