Dulce et Decorum Est WILFRED OWEN

1. Dulce et Decorum Est WILFRED OWEN

2. Wilfred Owen • Born March 18, 1893(“Owen”) • Was killed on November 4, 1918(“Owen”) • Born in Oswersty, England (Stallworthy) • Eldest of four children (“Owen”) • By the age of 14 Owen had already felt the pull toward poetry, and his mother warmly encouraged these ambitions. ("Owen") • Studied botany at University College before enrolling at the University of London ("Owen") • Shortage of money forced Owen to withdraw("Owen") • In 1911 Owen took up a post as assistant to the Priest of Dunsden in Oxfordshire(Stallworthy) • During a bout with depression, Owen suffered a physical and emotional collapse that put an end to his stay at Dunsden("Owen") • In February 1913 he left Dunsden and, when he had recovered, crossed to France where he taught at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux.(Stallworthy)

3. Wilfred Owen • He was in the Pyrenees, acting as tutor in a cultivated French household, when war was declared. A visit to a hospital for the wounded soon opened his eyes to the true nature of war, but it was not until September 1915 that he finally decided to return to England and enlist (Stallworthy). • On March 14, he suffered a concussion from a fall and was sent home only to recover and return to the line ("Owen"). • He was ill again by May 1917, and was diagnosed as being a victim of shell shock and trench fever ("Owen"). • While recovering at the hospital in Edinburgh that Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, an army captain and an established poet who wrote passionately of his experiences in the war.The meeting marked a turning point in Owen's career as a poet ("Owen"). • October 1917, he wrote the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”("Owen")

4. Wilfred Owen • His experience with shell shock, as well as his encounters with other troubled men in the psychiatric hospital, figured prominently in many of his poems ("Owen"). • After a three-week leave, which he had been granted upon his discharge from the hospital, Owen was posted to the 5th Manchesters, a reserve battalion based in Yorkshire, England ("Owen"). • October 1, 1918 Owen's battalion advanced on dangerous German-occupied territory in success ("Owen"). • Because of this England victory Owen was recommended for a Military Cross for his fine leadership during the battle ("Owen"). • Owen however was killed in action November 4, 1918, one week before the war was over ("Owen"). • Sassoon took on the task of publishing The Poems of Wilfred Owen and writing an introduction to the posthumous collection ("Owen"). • His poems remain as vivid testimony of physical and emotional struggle during one of humankind's darkest periods ("Owen").

5. Dulce et Decorum Est • Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf disappointed shells that dropped behind.GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or lime.--Dim, through the misty panes and thick green lightAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

6. Critical Analysis “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori “ • “This Latin phrase is part of a well-known line from the poet Horace. The full line, quoted at the end of Owen's poem, states that it is good (sweet) and fitting to die for one's country. The quotation is ironic; the poem shows how ugly and pointless death during war can be” (McCoy). • “Owen describes a small party of men, worn out and wounded, marching away from the battlefront for a period of rest. As they march, suddenly they become aware of a cloud of poison gas, the painful and often fatal mustard gas used by the Germans in that war. The weary men are jolted into quick action; they put on their gas masks. One soldier is not quick enough. He is overcome. The others watch from inside the dull glass panes of their masks but can do nothing to help the unlucky soldiers who writhes and chokes as he drowns in the gas. His death is painful, ugly, and sickening to witness. It still haunts the dreams of the speaker" (McCoy). • “At the end of the poem, the poet addresses his friend, one who teaches children, saying that the glory of patriotic death is an "old lie" that no one should teach anymore” (McCoy).

7. Critical Analysis • The poem “reflects many of the horrors experienced in the war”(Smith) • “Surely, the main focus of Owens’ poem is that of a victim, the man who has been asphyxiated by the gas but the larger picture is that all of the soldiers were victims; not just of their foreign enemy, but of their own delusions of what war would be life” (Smith). • “For the first time, a poet is not describing war in grandiose and epic terms with a readily identifiable set of male heroes, but rather is showing in grisly realistic detail the kind of horror and senseless death war causes” (Smith). • “The deaths he depicts are far from the ideas of heroes like Agamemnon or Achilles, far even from those represented in novels where the young gallant hero goes off to fight a war and never returns" (Smith). • “Themes Owen plays off of, most notably the Greek idea that war was epic and heroic—a worthy quest for any man, are the ideas Owen completely rejects" (Smith). • Anti-heroic (Smith) • “This could be considered as more political than poetic but there is the positive idea behind this poem; that poetry does not have to be insipid and purposeless—it can have a goal and can sweep the reader into making changes ”(Smith).

8. Critical Analysis • “The ability to create a connection between the reader and the suffering soldiers--and then to exploit that connection to create outrage against the war--is what differentiates Owen's complex protest poems from his pure elegies” (Gardett). • “By forcing his audience to join him, the poet personally, on this journey through the nightmarish world that has become the new reality for the poet, the reader, especially the one of this time, is able to see for themselves the ultimate waste, horror, and devastation of war”(Smith). • “In “Dulce et Decorum Est” Owen tries to personally involve the reader and makes them an active part of the images they witness ”(Smith). • “it is likely to represent the feelings of a great number of men during the Great War ”(Smith) • “By having the poem directly involve the reader and seem almost autobiographical in nature, Owen was able to transcend the rules of poetry and representations of war for the future”(Smith). • Wilfred’s description goes from “seeing the men physically from the outside….to conveying their shared feeling”(Huges).

9. Simile • Simile -is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced with the word "like" or "as" “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,” “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags” “And floundering like a man in fire or lime” “His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin” “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile” • “In “Dulce et Decorum Est” Owen tries to personally involve the reader and makes them an active part of the images they witness ”(Smith)

10. Works Cited Gardett, Marie Isabel. "Owen's Insensibility." The Explicator 61.4 Summer 2006: 224. General Reference Center Gold on Gale. Tampa Hillsborough County Public Library . 7 Oct. 2009 <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=GRGM>. Hughes, John. "Owen'sDulce et Decorum Est." The Explicator 64.3 Spring 2006: 160-163. General Reference Center Gold on Gale. T Tampa Hillsborough County Public Library. 7 Oct. 2009 <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=GRGM>. Stallworthy,Jon. "Owen, Wilfred (Edward Salter)"   The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Oxford University Press,1996. Oxford Reference Online on Student Resource Center. Tampa Hillsborough County Public Library.  7 October 2009< http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t58.e900> McCoy, Kathleen and Judith, Harlan. "Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)." English Literature from 1785. HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. 224(3). General Reference Center Gold. Gale. Tampa Hillsborough County Public Library. 7 Oct. 2009 <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=GRGM>. "Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918)." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Thomson Gale, 1998. General Reference Center Gold on Gale. Hillsborough County Public Library. 7 Oct. 2009 <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=GRGM>. Smith, Nicole.“"Dolce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen and the Transition of History.” Article Myriad 24 May, 2009. 16 Oct. 2009. < http://www.articlemyriad.com/dolce_decorum_2.htm>