Horace’s Dulce et Decorum Est, 'It is sweet and proper to die for one's country', is the expression from which Wilfred Owen decided to title and end his poem on war. This quote misrepresents and misdirects soldiers to believe that dying for ones country is patriotic. What can a philosopher know about war? What can thinker and not a done know about the frontline? War for a soldier on the front line is anything but sweet. Such was the case for Owen, “who was killed in action a few days before the armistice was declared”.
The use of artistic imagery to describe the horrendous atrocities of war is strong and specific. The narrator begins by saying that soldiers are “bent double, like old beggars,” (1) which is a simile to describe the soldiers as weak and delusional. Similes, metaphors and irony are to say that war ages the soldiers emotionally and physically. The use of irony in “Men marched asleep” (5) denotes exhaustion and zombie-like state. Soldiers are supposed to be alert and attentive, not asleep.
In the second stanza, there is a shift of tense from past to present, “Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!” (10) As if the narrator wants the reader to experience the dreadful side of war. Later in the stanza, another simile is use to describe the dreary condition of war. The severity of trauma suffered by most soldiers is showed in the following similes, “floud’ring like a man in fire” (12), “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” (14). “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” He describes the awfulness of dying from gas poisoning.
In the third stanza, the narrator pulls the reader in to experience the deplorable conditions of the soldiers in the battleground. These soldiers are walking around sick, wounded and with no hope of going home. Owen’s frustration and helplessness is shown in the description of the soldiers’ physical features “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” (20). Can the devil be sick of sinning; this statement...