Dulce Et Decorum Est

The troops were torn out of their nightmarish walk and surrounded by “hoots” of gas bombs. Owen capitalized greatly on his similes and metaphors by using them to say something more forcefully. In the beginning of the poem the troops were portrayed as “drunk with fatigue. ” The gas was so strong that he could see a man drowning in it because he was scrounging to get his mask on. The act of relating an experience to something that most people can relate to adds greatly to the effectiveness of the content of this poem. The use of the graphic animal imagery in this poem brings out all the soldier’s painful sufferings. The third, and probably most graphic example of graphic imagery was when Owen said “Come gargling from froth corrupted lungs. Owen also uses parallelism to show how he had traumatic dreams where the man is plunging at him “guttering”, “choking”, and “drowning”. He asked the reader if they would tell their children that it was ‘sweet’ and ‘dignified’ to die for ones country after they had seen what war truly is. It shows a soldier being slaughtered very clearly and evokes explicit images in the reader’s mind. Right in the first line he described the troops as being “Like old beggars under sacks. Everyone, in “an ecstasy of fumbling” was forced to run out into the mist. Later in the poem, when the gas was dropped, it painted a picture so deeply in the reader’s mind that it would make the reader shudder. ” This implies that the troops are not only tired, but are so tired that they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in beds for weeks on end. He said that in the reader’s worst nightmare if “you too could pace behind the wagon and watch the soldier’s eyes writhing”, it would be the vilest thing that the reader had ever seen.