Similes In Dulce Et Decorum Est

The use of repetitant capitalisation of the first "GAS" and the use of exclamation marks creates this mood. The next line "An ecstasy of fumbling" adds to the current poem atmosphere with everyone fumbling to have the masks on before being affected by gas. An anti-climax of helmets being fitted "just in time" misleads the reader into thinking that the helmets all were put on successfully but in the following plosive conjunction "but" the reader now understands this is not the case. Again in the last line Owen requests for the attention of the reader with the personal pronoun and simile "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" an image of the fog of green air in which the soldiers disappear in is generated in the mind of the reader.

In the first stanza of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, the reader is instantly drawn in with “Bent double”. This gives the poem a feeling of immediacy which is then followed up by a detailed description of what is to come. “Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs/ Men marched asleep/ Many had lost their boots but limped on.” The reader is yet again, drawn into the graphic scene of war. The alliteration “Knock-kneed” emphasises the battle weariness of the soldiers and intensifies the way they depicted war. Owen creates rhythm throughout the stanza by littering the poem with pauses. He uses this technique in the line “All went blind; Drunk with fatigue; death even to the hoots Of tired”. Owen makes the scene more vivid by bringing in his own involvement to war with “we cursed through the sludge”, he uses the term “sludge” to help capture the agony which was being experienced by the soldiers.

Then, "An ecstasy of fumbling / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time / But someone still was yelling out and stumbling [. . .]. " Everyone has managed to put on his mask, except one unfortunate soldier. As the mustard gas seeps into his lungs, he begins to scream and jerk around, but it is too late for his companions to save him. "[W]atch the white eyes writing in his face / His hanging face / [. . .] at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs [. . .] / Of vile, incurable sores on the innocent tongue [. . .]. " Nowhere in the entire poem is there any mention of how wonderful and brave the soldiers feel at being given the chance to die for their country.

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

The men were also “Drunk with fatigue” because they never had time to rest from the fighting and marching, and this metaphor makes it apparent that the men are so tired they are actually stumbling and staggering to continue much like someone who is inebriated would (7). The speaker goes on to use a simile to describe a man who did not get his gas mask on fast enough and now he “was yelling out and stumbling / And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime” because the gas was melting his insides and was acting much like a fish out of water would, suffering from excruciating pain (11-12). The speaker further describes the man suffering because of the gas, while he himself had his mask on fast enough, “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” (14). When the speaker uses this simile describing the man drowning under the green sea, he is actually referring to the man literally drowning in his own blood because the sea of green gas had melted his lungs causing him to choke and die on his own blood. It is evident that the similes and metaphors the speaker is using to describe the soldiers and the entire situation of the war he is stuck within are becoming more and more gut-wrenching, and the speaker’s tone becomes more and more corrective and angry. The

The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.

This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content. In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile "Bent double, like old beggars"(1) not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile "coughing like hags"(2) helps to depict the soldiers? poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers. By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers? journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they must have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the extent of their exhaustion.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is another of Wilfred Owen’s poems that conveys inner human conflict, in terms of past doings in World War I. The poem was written in 1917 at Craiglockhart (Owen’s first battle after his rehabilitation due to ‘shellshock’). It portrays an inner change in his approach to war and it’s gruesome environment:

This image is definitely not the glamorous picture of glory that, say army recruitment presents; worse, the soldiers are doing worse than civilians. As soon as the next stanza “[m]en marched asleep. Many had lost their boots” (5). They have lost their usual awareness and move mechanically; that doesn’t sound appealing! It gets worse: “[b]ut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (6). So now they’re limping, apparently wounded, covered in blood, and can’t even see? It worsens further, “[d]runk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (7-8). The soldiers are so exhausted it incapacitates them, and they can no longer hear the bullets being fired. This poem sounds like a distorted nightmare, except the speaker is living it, and even reliving the torment of the soldier’s death while he is unconscious. Owen’s wording expresses that the soldiers are merely men, deteriorating and inconceivably overwhelmed the opposite of positive war poetry containing glory and honor.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem written by English soldier and a poet, Wilfred Owen. He has not only written this poem, but many more. Such as “Insensibility”, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Futility”, “Exposure”, and “Strange Meeting” are all his war poems. (Poets.org) His poetry shows the horror of the war and uncovers the hidden truths of the past century. Among with his other poems “Dulce et Decorum Est” is one of the best known and popular WWI poem. This poem is very shocking as well as thought provoking showing the true experience of a soldiers in trenches during war. He proves the theme suffering by sharing soldiers’ physical pain and psychological trauma in the battlefield. To him that was more than just fighting for owns country. In this poem, Owen uses logos, ethos, and pathos to proves that war was nothing more than hell.

In the first stanza the narrator talks about blankets that are covering up the dead soldiers. The narrator first mentions a “brownish woolen blanket” (5) that covers up each soldier. While the blankets can be literally seen as merely covering up the soldiers as a means of respect, they can also be a symbol representing a safeguard from the horrors of war. Death is an inevitable outcome of war, something that these blankets are covering up to soften the blow. Furthermore, the narrator talks about another blanket which is, “[A] grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all” (6). It is not clear whether this blanket is literal but symbolically this blanket represents war itself. Whenever there is a war, every being is affected. Therefore, like the grey and heavy blanket that is covering all the soldiers, war, covers and impacts everyone. Both these blankets symbolically represent the horrors of war and act as a safeguard against them. Another major symbol in the poem is the face of Jesus Christ. This is introduced in the last stanza of the poem as the narrator lifts the blanket off of the third body and says, “Young man I think I know you – I think this face is the face of the Christ himself” (14-15). In this case, Christ is used as a symbol to represent the negative aspect of war. Several thousand years ago, Christ sacrificed himself because of the sins of the people around him. Drawing a parallel to this, the narrator says, “and here again [Christ] lies” (15), implying that the sins of humanity are immense and can only be diminished through another sacrifice by Christ. The poet uses Christ as a symbol to show the negative aspect of war while also highlighting the unending nature of war. The poet also implies that in the years following Christ’s crucifixion, humanity has learned

Is it really worth dying for our country? Is it really worth it to go through horrific and dangerous events to prove one's bravery? In the short poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and the song “Hero of War” by Rise Against, have a similar message about war. These both convey their message using similar and different types of of literary devices and figurative language. One type of figurative language in the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a simile “His hanging face, like devils sick of sin”(20 Owen) shows that the narrator is comparing the mans face covered in blood to the devil.

Since the soldiers could do nothing to help the dying man they “flung” (line 18) him behind a wagon. This shows how people are dehumanized in war and their lives are disposable and can simply be flung away to become another statistic. When the narrator says, “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,” (line 15) it insinuates that all his dreams have been replaced by nightmares of the chilling memory of how he could not do anything to help his fellow soldier. He can only replay the horrific memory of the gas attack over and over inside his head. The reader cannot help but visualize this young soldier dying a slow, painful death. This emphasizes the sarcasm in the title. How can anyone glorify a death so horrible?

The second stanza speaks of how it so often slips our mind that war does not only affect the men who are in direct combat. The young women too, suffer greatly in silence. Though so removed from the grime and blood of the battlefield, one cannot imagine the excruciating pain of having to part with their loved ones, with the knowledge that 'the holy glimmers of goodbyes ' might as well be goodbye forever. Every moment of the day, they agonize over the terrifying thought that their loved one has been shot or injured. There is no way of telling - and the guessing game is exhausting. There is no more joy or excitement in life as each 'slow dusk ' drags by, their only reason for existence condensed into a single purpose - receiving news from the battlefield. Often time, their agonizing wait ends in a heartbreaking death. This is signified from the line 'the drawing down of blinds '.

This is when the poem switches from describing the setting to describing the one of the characters a dying soldiers. "And floundring like a man fire or lime" "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" gives us a view of what they see using this simile as the one soldier dies very painfully not quick but its slowly. The narrator says that "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight" to let the reader know that he relives this moment over and over and is haunted by the sight. The gas weapon in the story is a very unique way that the soldiers can die and its not the typical way most people would think a soldier would die. Most peole think that death would be most common in battle with the enemy in a fire fight with bullets. The author does this on purpose to emphasize his theme, that it's not what most people believe about war.