Dulce et Decorum Est Flashcards
(12 cards)
What happens in the poem?
Exhausted soldiers are marching away from a battle when they are attacked with chlorine gas. The narrator sees a man die and is haunted in his dreams by it. The narrator paints a graphic picture of the soldiers injuries and uses his experiences to warn against telling people that dying for your country is honourable
What is the rhyme scheme and what does it tell us?
The poem uses alternating rhyming couplets to reflect the relentlessness of the soldiers’ suffering.
What does enjambment, caesura and irregular stanza length and metre create?
The enjambment and caesura creates a disjointed and rhythm and a constantly changing pace and the irregular line length and metre and to the sense of uncertainty, reflecting war’s unpredictable nature
What is the structure of the poem?
The tone of the poem is very serious at the start as the narrator paints a picture of his memories of war, and later explains how they still affect him in the present. The poem then becomes an appeal to the reader and the narrator uses an ironic tone to put his opinion across
What are the themes of this poem?
War, suffering, pain, violence, loss and death
What does “bent double” show?
It implies that the soldiers have been physically broken and prematurely weakened by war - they are meant to be young, strong men
What does “like old beggars” show?
The simile shows how the soldiers have been affected by war - “old” suggests that they have lost their youth to the war
What is special about the title of this poem and why?
Dulce et decorum Est is only half of the full saying and this is significant because it shows that people haven’t got a full idea of what war is like and don’t comprehend the horrors of it
Who wrote this poem and when?
Wilfred Owen in 1918 while WW1 was still ongoing
What does the caesura in the first stanza represent
It slows the pace of the poem, emphasising how slow the soldiers are walking
What is significant about the quote “All went lame; all blind”?
The repetition of “all” emphasises how widespread the suffering is
What is significant about the structure of stanzas 2 and 4?
They use long sentences to emphasise how vivid the narrator’s memories arekj
