FREE ESSAY ON DULCE ET DECORUM EST

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.
Bibliography
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