Dulce Et Decorum Est

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In Wilfred Owen’s famous World War I poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”, is the first words of a Latin saying which means, “It is sweet and proper”. The entire saying, which the poem ends, “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori”, meaning it is sweet and proper to die for one’s own country. This saying was the most commonly understood and also used widely in the promotion at the beginning of the war. It made war seem heroic and ethical. Owen is showing in this poem, by portraying the terror and brutality of the war, highly common belief that war was gratifying and honorable, which was from the truth. We are introduce to the setting of the poem as well as many of the horrors of the war. While the soldiers are leaving the battlefield and moving to a place to rest when they are…show more content…
The elation of fumbling shows how desperate the soldiers where to find odd fitting gas masks, how a mask was the difference between painful death and life. Owen reveals similarities in the unlucky soldier to someone who has fallen in a fire or a pile of lime and is being consumed by the pain. He is comparing the soldier drowning; he is drowning in the gas in the pain of death. The thickness of the gas has a liquid appearance. The “misty panes” (13) of the gas mask are made to symbolize portholes looking into the “thick green light” (13) of sea. He also uses imagery of drowning in several instances throughout the second and third stanza. Owen describes the soldier’s horrific death in the third stanza, which happens in front of the helpless speaker. He informs the reader he sees this traumatic scene over and over again in his own dreams. The speaker cannot ever elude this horror. Repeatedly showing the imagery of lack senses and drowning are used. The word “guttering” (16) could be used to describe the soldier made during his lasts breaths as he went “chocking, drowning” (16) to his
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