Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est

                            by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of 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 stumbling
And floundering 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.

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 blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

 This poem took place in the battlefield of World War I. The speaker started its poem with describing how the soldiers on the battlefield suffered and struggle with death. They were all mentally and physically tortured by the war.

            In the second stanza, we knew that they were attacked by the gas shells. All of the soldiers grabbed on their gas masks in hurry to save their own lives but not all of them get on their masks on time. The speaker through the “green sea” watched them “drowning” and finally went towards death.     

            The poem moved to the time after the war in the third stanza. The images of the dying soldiers always appeared to the speaker everywhere and anytime, even in his dream. “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”

            In the final stanza, the speaker said that if only the people witness how cruel the war can be and even gone through the trauma after the war, they might change their mind to fight in the war. The speaker said that war is not something that gorgeous and honour to sacrifice in the war as what they usually thought.

            Suffering is the most suitable theme for this poem. Throughout the poem, the soldiers suffered not only physically pain, but also psychologically trauma even after the war. As for the speaker, he was attacked by the gas shells and after the war, he was caught by the images of the dying soldiers that he witnessed them to die in the gas-attack. The speaker suffered both pain from the past and present. He then argued that war is not the nice place to fight in, and is something that is so cruel and painful. 

Work Cited:

English Emory Education, http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html .