dulce et decorum est

Question 1

overview

Answer 1

At the start of WW1, Owen was pro war. However, after fighting in it he became anti-war and believed that war wastes young soldiers’ lives. This was because he had been changed by his experiences and tried to show the truth of what war looks like. At first, he describes the aftermath of a fight and how tired and pained the soldiers are. After, he describes a gas attack and the effects it had on him after seeing a fellow soldier die. Finally, he addresses propaganda authors and criticises those who make war sound like an adventure. The purpose of the poem is to discourage people from joining the war by showing them the dark reality of it. The poem feels very realistic because it was a personal experience that the author had.

Question 2

beginning

Answer 2

• The soldiers are described as ‘old beggars.’ This suggests that the soldiers are tired, dirty and that war has made them seem older than they actually are. They were recruiting young, fit men for the war therefore they shouldn’t look ‘old.’ This contradicts the classic image of a soldier which shows how the author is presenting the harsh reality of war. The fact that they are described as ‘beggars’ suggests how they are desperate to leave the battlefield.
• Owen says how the ‘men marched asleep.’ Through the use of exaggeration the poet suggests how tired the soldiers are because they are not actually asleep but they are so exhausted that it feels like they are. This helps to emphasises how awful it must’ve been for the soldiers and how much they must’ve suffered.

Question 3

middle

Answer 3

• During a gas attack, Owen sees someone die and says that he ‘saw him drowning.’ The gruesome imagery of the soldier ‘drowning’ paints a picture in the readers mind that the solider was choking and fighting for air which emphasises how horrific his death was. The use of first person suggests how this is a personal experience to the author and this makes it more traumatic.
• The effect of this is that in his dreams he sees him ‘guttering, choking, drowning.’ The use of sound imagery makes the soldiers death more vivid to the reader suggesting how horrific it would have been to witness it. The fact that he sees the death in his nightmare’s suggests how he is haunted by the war and he can never escape it because you can’t control your dreams.

Question 4

end

Answer 4

• Finally, he describes the effect of the gas to be like cancer which helps suggest the pain the soldier was in because it’s compared to the pain of a disease that rots a person from the inside. This emphasises just how terrible war is as people die in inhuman ways and the people who make it out alive are left suffering because of the memory of war.

Question 5

form & structure

Answer 5

• Lots of hard sounds to emphasise the feelings of pain and suffering that the soldiers felt.
• In the first stanza the pace is slow which could represent the slow marching from the soldiers. When there’s the gas attack in the second stanza the pace gets faster which gives the poem a sense of urgency and panic which reflects how the soldiers would have been feeling.
• The tone of the poem is sarcastic and bitter which shows how passionately Owen feels about the war and people who encourage it. The harsh and blunt language that he uses adds to this and suggests how horrific the events were as Owen doesn’t sugarcoat his experience.