FREE ESSAY ON WILFRED OWEN'S DULCE ET DECORUM EST

WILFRED OWEN'S DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Explication of "Dulce et Decorum Est" In his poem exhibiting the gruesome imagery of World
War I, "Dulce et Decorum Est", Wilfred Owen conveys his strongly anti-war sentiments to
the reader. Through the irony found in the ending, horrific imagery, and the feeling of
surrealism woven into the poem, Owen forces the reader to experience the war, and
therefore feel almost as decisively about it as he does. Owen applies the rhetorical
situation, sensory imagery, and figurative language to contribute to the power and
anti-war sentiment of the poem. The rhetorical situation in the poem helps to make the
reader accept the poem's message by showing that the speaker may be trusted to be
knowledgeable about the subject at hand. The poem would be far less effective had the
speaker not personally experienced the vicious and cruel world war provides. Another
effective element of the rhetorical situation is that the audience addressed in the poem
is the person who would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some
desperate glory/ The old lie (25-27) if he himself had been to war. The speaker has been
robbed by the deceitful notion of the sweetness of war; childhood and innocence are no
longer fathomable. Essentially, the poem becomes an accusation and the reader, like a
bell, can clearly hear bitterness in the speaker's voice for having been deceived so
greatly. Owen uses paradoxical sensory imagery to communicate his early illusions of
war's heroic glory soon dissolving into a hellish reality. The speaker in the poem must
distance himself from the pain and suffering before his eyes, and so he turns away from
the haunting flares (3). The phrase blood shod (6) early in the poem is an example of the
contradictory truths of war- soldier's boots are made to protect his feet from pain and
injury. In this instance, however, Owen compares the feeling of protection with the
appalling image of bloody pain to express the irony and senselessness in war. With gas
shells dropping softly behind (8), the word softly appeals in a positive manner to our
tactile and auditory senses, yet this is being said about lethal weapons. In this image,
Owen again presents an unexpected and paradoxical picture of war. The speaker,
emphasizing that he is behind misty panes (13) as he witnesses the dramatic and grotesque
death of another soldier, spares no detail, leaving the reader to deal with sudden,
shocking emotions summoned in response to the sensory horror. The figurative language in
the poem allows the reader to share in the speaker's sense of open-mouthed wonder at the
situation. Owen states that Men marched asleep (5): a virtual impossibility, the metaphor
represents the complete exhaustion endured by the soldiers. The green sea (14) of gas in
which the soldier is drowning (14) depicts the dreamlike circumstances as the speaker
perceived them- similar to the alseep metaphor, where only in an alternative reality
state would the atrocities of war be tolerable. The incurable sores on innocent tongues
(24) declare the absurdity and injustice of war. Owen's figurative language highlights
the complete irrationality of war with an austerity that gives the poem much of its
irrefutable power. Owen clearly communicates his aversion to war through the use of the
rhetorical situation, sensory imagery, and figurative language in his poem. Not only does
he covey his own feelings through the speaker, but he also succeeds in inspiring similar
feelings in his readers by forcing them to encounter the horror of war. Through all of
the above devices, Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est conveys its purpose to the reader in
a thunderous and powerful voice.