Dulce et Decorum Est

             Explication of "Dulce et Decorum Est"
             In his poem exhibiting the gruesome imagery of World War I, "Dulce et Decorum Est", Wilfred Owen conveys his strongly anti-war sentiments to the reader. Through the irony found in the ending, horrific imagery, and the feeling of surrealism woven into the poem, Owen forces the reader to experience the war, and therefore feel almost as decisively about it as he does. Owen applies the rhetorical situation, sensory imagery, and figurative language to contribute to the power and anti-war sentiment of the poem.
             The rhetorical situation in the poem helps to make the reader accept the poem's message by showing that the speaker may be trusted to be knowledgeable
             about the subject at hand. The poem would be far less effective had the speaker not personally experienced the vicious and cruel world war provides. Another
             effective element of the rhetorical situation is that the audience addressed in the poem is the person who "would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory/ The old lie" (25-27) if he himself had been to war. The speaker has been robbed by the deceitful notion of the sweetness of war; childhood and innocence are no longer fathomable. Essentially, the poem becomes an accusation and the reader, like a bell, can clearly hear bitterness in the speaker's voice for having been deceived so greatly.
             Owen uses paradoxical sensory imagery to communicate his early illusions of war's heroic glory soon dissolving into a hellish reality. The speaker in the poem must distance himself from the pain and suffering before his eyes, and so he turns away from the "haunting flares" (3). The phrase "blood shod" (6) early in the poem is an example of the contradictory truths of war- soldier's boots are made to protect his feet from pain and injury. In this instance, however, Owen compares the feeling of protection with the appalling image...

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Dulce et Decorum Est. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 08:51, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/46893.html