In the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”,
Wilfred Owen illustrates the tragedies of war. The poem itself is a piece of juxtaposition;
the title literally means “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country”,
yet the poem speaks of the horrors of losing a fellow soldier in war.
Owen begins the poem with similes,
comparing the doubled-over soldiers to “old beggars under sacks” as they are
“coughing like hags”. He paints a picture of the soldiers being beyond the
state of exhaustion, but still marching. The soldiers are so tired that they do
not even hear the sound of a gas bomb dropping behind them. Owen uses a paradox
to describe the bombs, claiming that they are “dropping softly behind”. This
paradox is used to demonstrate that the soldiers are in such a state of fatigue
that the sound of bombs barely affects them.
After the soldiers see the gas
bomb, Owen describes the chaos as an “ecstasy of fumbling”. This expression
shows that the gas sent the soldiers into a state of utter confusion, which is
the same affect that ecstasy would have on a person. Owen’s story then turns to
the soldier who fails to make it out of the cloud of gas, describing him as
“flound’ring” and “drowning…under a green sea”. This terminology relates to
fishing and the ocean. When the soldier is described as floundering, it relates
to when a fish is pulled out of the ocean and is struggling to cling on to
life.
Owen then continues with the
extended metaphor and uses words such as “drowning” and “choking” to express
the soldier’s last moments of life. As the soldier suffers his painful death,
his face is described with a simile as being like “a devil’s sick of sin”. The
poem is wrapped up with Owen speaking to the reader, asking them if they would
tell this story to an aspiring soldier who is searching for “desperate glory”.
He is trying to convince the reader that there other ways to find glory without
putting oneself in danger. In the last line of the poem, Owen finishes his
juxtaposition saying that the expression is a lie, and it is neither sweet nor
becoming to die in war.
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