Dulce et Decorum Est

by : Ayman, Leanne and Michelle :)

• Thesis: Horror of war especially during gas attack as opposed to the propagandic truth

• vignette* from the front lines of WW1 (specifically at British soldiers attacked with chlorine gas)

• written when he was being treated for shell-shock at Craiglockhart hospital

*vignette: brief evocative description, account, or episode...

Language and meaning

• Title : Taken from a Roman Poet Horace. Latin for "It is sweet and honorable"

Dulce et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed though sludgeTill on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudgeMen marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

soldiers become two people

allusions of witches, cultural weight, stuff of nightmare

refer to soldiers-late introduction-reluctant to introduce themselves

keep on remembering or feeling it, nightmare

rest camp (barracks or death)

rockets are burn to light up man & other targets front lines

-zombies-unaware-being told what to do

figuratively and literallywar is enveloping their vary beings

Misery as universal condition. No one escapes, no one.

sounds made by shells rushing through the air

original lines:tired, outstripped Five-Nines

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys ! － An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,But someone still was yelling out an stumblingAnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. －Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,He plunges at me,guttering, choking, drowning.

early name for gas masks

eerie-we don't know who "someone" is

sense of immediacy-how everyone panicked-one person did not put his mask on time

nightmare scene murky green lights and all encompassing fog

glasses in eye piece of gas mask

only able to recall- can't get it out only able to see

recalling + repeat of nightmare

remembrance of nighttransition from past to presentillustrate how gruesome the effects of gas on men

white or chalky substance - burn live tissues

centre of the poem

-

}

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind 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 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

idealistic, enthusiasm

can't understand but tells us what is going on, speaker doeesn't even care wether we could actually experience the horrors of battle-can't understand how horrible his life was... and is

common misconception propagandaOld = used for a long timeLie = propaganda (not knowing the true horrors of war)

normally regurgitated grass that cow chews -usually geen and bubbly (seen from soldier's mouth)

allusion: popular stories about glories at war-saying is inscribed on wall of chapel of Royal Millitary Academy Sandhurst (1913)

instilled since young that it is sweet to die for the country

might refer to Jessie Pope or reader

allusion of bad

Jessie Pope -through her poetry (encourages young men to sign up for war) e.g: "who's for the game"

-

transition from battlefield (first stanza) to the mindscape (second stanza)-soldier's mind never leave the battlefield-no difference between wartime and traumatized mind after battlechronicles of the living dead : soldiers whose minds are trapped in the horrors of the battlefeld

concludes that: if one were to see firsthand the reality of war, one might not repeat mendacious platitudes

Structure and form

• Lack of rhythm or music• War is not music or rhythmic dance• full of stumbling,fumbling, tired, hopeless, dying men• writing about ghastly scene of war and of a fallen soldier

drowning in poisonous gas• seems conventional on the surface but when look at

deeper noveil, it's not = much like shells exploding from inside

• break from pretty language precedent in poetry of his days (uses awful imagery of real and not romantically heroic war

• consistent metre..

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed though sludgeTill on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudgeMen marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shot. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Allteration of hard K-sharp attack of machine gunfire,-coughing/ echo

ababcdcd

it is hard to visualize war-Owen is convinced that the readers will not be able to understand how twisted and deformed bodies of soldiers have become

caesura (rhythm : march)

Alliteration of L (interminable marching of soldiers

imagery :1) of sleep or dreams

2) un-coordination

3) lack/loss of sense

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys ! － An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,But someone still was yelling out an stumblingAnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. －Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,He plunges at me,guttering, choking, drowning.

Repetition: frenzy of action e

fefge

ge

simile-too hard for Owen to describe-so awful

repetition of green: allow our sense of scene tofold upon itself

"ee"- long-lengthen time to read- slowly (shifts into slow motion)

imagery :1) of sleep or dreams

2) un-coordination

3) lack/loss of sense

4) of sea or of someone drowning

recalll/repeat -nightmares always the same (about being in war)

should've ended here like a normal poem (14 lines)

but it continued as if mimicking Owen's inability to get the war out of his head-poem did not stop where it should, thoughts on war did not end when the war end

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind 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 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.

alliteration = nightmare

hihijkjklmlm

NIGHTMARE!

juxtaposition: innocent, willing to believe lie, but they will learn differently once they experienced the war firsthand

ultimate irony: imagery used is not sweet as the title suggested

imagery :1) of sleep or dreams

2) un-coordination

3) lack/loss of sense

4) of sea or of someone drowning

latin is a dead language

personification: eyes have lives of their own; detached from watching body as a whole

sibilance: hissing

Symbolism

Dulce et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed though sludgeTill on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudgeMen marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shot. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

}choppy-no more elaborate similes= not worried about comparing his comrades-sweeping observation of men -whole war seems worn out

tone: bitter, eerie, disgusting setting :

somewhere in a battefield of WW1

walking as if they were dead (out of exhaustion)

description of trench warfare

soldiers in this poem are crippled, mentally and physically overcome by weight of their experiences in war

-simile upon simile before we are acquainted with the subjects of the poem

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys ! － An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,But someone still was yelling out an stumblingAnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. －Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,He plunges at me,guttering, choking, drowning.

}verbs change -he's in the moment, watching the man yelling, stumbling, floundering

apocalyptic language; at the end of the world anything that you're doing will seem ecstatc

"ecstasy"-ironic language= elevated language with absolute chaos. This whole thing seems out of proportion

synechdoche= he can't do anything, can only play over and over in his mind

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind 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 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

why end with Latin quote? Why not with an english slogan?

not 10 syllables-huge awkward silence like silence of death

} Lash out those who helped him get into this mess

}disgusting- speaker's point-shows how absolutely degrading, humiliating and surreal the destruction of the human body an be

going into detail, forcing you to imagine how horrible his dreams can be}