Dulce Et Decorum Est - Poem Essay

Prompt #2: Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze how the speaker uses the varied imagery of the poem to reveal his attitude towards the nature of war.

 “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

It is easy to mistake Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est as a pro bono, pro-war work of literature. A simple glimpse at the title of the poem, a deceitful latin phrase that literally means “sweat and right,” might imply that the author was giving a message for war. Upon further investigation, the reader might realise the dichotomy between the title and the meaning of the work. Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est tells of the hauntingly realistic story of war. Owen is insistent for society to reevaluate its stance on war believing war shouldn’t be romanticised, because war is grit, it is sunken eyes and hunched backs, dirt and blood not the “roses and hearts” that young men and women believe it to be.

The tone of the poem is somber and realistic, it grips the reader’s attention by vividly describing the reality of war. Owen mentioned soldiers as “old beggars under sacks” to ratify the fatigue and dwindling morale that often takes a hold of soldiers. The poem further exemplifies Owen’s claim as the work openly talks about the grotesque deaths soldiers might encounter. There isn’t anything romantic about dying for a country, nothing honourable. The death of a soldier isn’t slowed down with dramatic, classical music beating in the background, it’s dirty and grotesque. Death in the middle of the field is “guttering, choking, drowning,” it is utterly painful and ugly. The work belittles the way war is often time interpreted as something sort-of romantic. It’s similar to how living in a small town gets over romanticized. People don’t see that living in a small town isn’t as romantic as it seems with its lack of diversity and lack of acceptance. War isn’t romantic, it’s not “sweet” and “right,” it’s blood and gore and death. It is taking hold of young men and women to use as triggers, using people to do the dirty work so that they’ll be the one’s that dirty their hands. Soldiers are sheeps waiting for the slaughterhouse, “trudging” on, all the “limping on, blood-shod.” The fatigue etched deep within them, the horrors of bloodshed and the dwindling light of a candle, soldiers, lied to, turn their backs on their innocence.  

War is like “gas! gas!” It poisons children to believe it as right, in exchange for “desperate glory.” Owen continues to reiterate the “old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori (it is sweet and right to die for your country).” Potential death does not equal glory, nor does being plagued by the trauma brought by war. Owen’s own experiences with war extends the haunting reality of death, “of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.”