Transcript
Page 1: Web viewWilfred Owen. Dulce et Decorum Est. Techniques. Stanza 1. Sarcasm/irony: opposite of poem’s actual content (title) Hyperbole: soldiers are old before their time and

Wilfred OwenDulce et Decorum EstTechniquesStanza 1• Sarcasm/irony: opposite of poem’s actual content (title)• Hyperbole: soldiers are old before their time and rendered vulnerable

(‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’)• Onomatopoeia: recreates scene to draw in audience (‘Knock-kneed,

coughing like hags…’)• Alliteration: emphasises exhaustion (‘Men marched asleep.’)• Simile: not only comparing them as dirty, ragged and sick, but a connota-

tion of being uncared for (‘like old beggars under sacks… coughing like hags’)

• Hyperbole: stresses current condition (‘All went lame; all blind’)• Metaphor: highlights impact of war on men (‘Drunk with fatigue’)• Connotation: hardship of war (‘deaf even to the hoots’)• Punctuation: creates horror of the situation

Stanza 2• Instructional language and repetition: increases tension and creates

sense of urgency (‘Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!…’)• Assonance: used to highlight his experience of drowning (‘Dim, through the

misty panes and thick green light’)• Verb and adjective: undercut any romantic image of war (‘…An ecstasy of

fumbling’)• Simile: secures our empathy (‘And floundering like a man in fire or lime’)• Simile: likens the gas to the sea to show suffocating effects (‘As under a

green sea, I saw him drowning’)

Stanza 3• Paradox: Sight acts as a synecdoche- standing in for a speaker as a whole• Understatement: the dreams are actually nightmares (‘In all my dreams…’)

Stanza 4• Negative descriptive language: to show war is not glorified (‘If in some

smothering dreams you too could pace’)• Inclusive language: forces the reader to empathise (‘Behind the wagon

that we flung him in’)• Alliteration: used to stress the horrific sight (‘And watch the white eyes

writhing in his face’)• Ironic simile: a soldier is a victim of the evil at war (‘…like a devil’s sick of

sin’)

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• Repetition (of ‘if’): shows Owen’s realisation his message may not be ac-cepted

• Capitalisation: shows the falsity of the lie (‘Lie’)• Rhyme: an ironic agreement in sound which exposes the falsity of the pro-

paganda

Notes• Quality of meaning in ‘bent double’- soldiers have become ‘like old beggars’

and ‘coughing like hags’ with the similes showing they are the antithesis of the stereotype of strong, masculine soldiers emphasising they are physi-cally derelict and mentally numb, which is reinforced by the alliteration ‘men marched asleep’

• Repetition of ‘all’ emphasises the extent of their suffering, whilst the parallel construction of ‘all went lame; all blind’ combined with the pluralised ‘men’ emphasises the universal misery

• Aural imagery is conveyed through words such as ‘trudge’, ‘blood-shod’, ‘drunk’ and ‘tired’ to convey the misery and oppressiveness of the situation created by the plodding rhythm of the opening stanza

• Dramatic imagery is conveyed through the imperative ‘Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!’ with the capitalisation and exclamation marks highlighting the ur-gency of the situation

• ‘Dim through the misty panes and thick green light/ As under a green sea I saw him drowning’ -the colour imagery and simile conveys not only the physical impact of the horror of war but the psychological impact as he re-tains the nightmare of the man ‘drowning’ , showing youth’s lost innocence

• The psychological impact is reinforced by the use of grotesque verbs such as ‘guttering’, ‘choking’, ‘drowning’, ‘smothering’, ‘hanging’ and ‘gargling’ as Owen catalogues the physical and psychological suffering of youth who have lost their innocence

• ‘Helpless sight’- paradoxical synecdoche- the soldier’s sight is fine but he is helpless

• Metaphors of ‘drunk’ and ‘deaf’ show the desensitisation of the soldiers• Simile ‘floundering like a man in fire or lime’ secures the audience empathy

as we sense their powerlessness and pity men trapped by war• Active verb- ‘flung him in’ shows their is no honour or glory in war• Ironic simile- ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’ is ironic as although the soldier ap-

pears to be a devil through partaking in killing he is really a victim of warfare• ‘Come gargling from froth corrupted lungs obscene as cancer, bitter as the

cud’ combines dramatic imagery and similes to shock those at home out of acceptance of the propaganda at home that said it was noble to sacrifice your life in battle

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• ‘My friend’- bitter tone shows that he believes that propaganda is a tale for ‘children’ and adults should face the reality of war and soldier’s deaths and not glorify them

• The rhyme ‘glory’ and ‘mori’ is an ironic agreement in sound which exposes the falsity of the propaganda

• The change in pronouns from first person to pluralisation ‘we’ shows he has used intensely personal experience to create a poem where lessons apply to us all about the cruelty and horror of war and the physical and psycholog-ical damage it causes

Anthem for Doomed YouthTechniques• Assonance: mournful tone (‘doomed youth’)• Adjective: negative tone- sense of overwhelming fate that humans can’t re-

verse (‘doomed’)• Rhetorical question: underlines Owen’s belief of ‘What’s the point?’ (‘What

passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’)• Simile: humanity is stripped from soldiers (‘these who die as cattle’)• Repetition: stresses the nature of their death (‘Only’)• Personification, alliteration and onomatopoeia: combine to enhance the

cruelty and brutality of war (‘Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle’)• Negative connotations: stressed by the alliterative refuted use of ‘no’, ‘nor’

showing Christian rites are actually mockeries• Hyphen and semi-colon: create pauses stressing no funeral rites can be

given• Personified sibilant phrase: emphasises sadness and impact of their

deaths at home (‘And bugles calling for them from sad shires’)• Reflective tone: stresses how war strips men of human dignity (‘What can-

dles may be held to speed them all?’)• Rhetorical question: indicates shift in poem- the poem is now comparing a

right and fitting death to death at war • Extended metaphor: reinforces the idea that there is no good send-off for

youth who die (‘glimmer’, ‘shine’, ‘candles’)• Tone of sestet: softer and more compassionate mourning of the lost youth• Alliteration: creates a somber, solemn atmosphere (‘And each slow dusk a

drawing down of blinds’)• Rhyming couplet: emphasises the impact of the soldier’s deaths (‘patient

minds… drawing down of blinds’)

Notes• The adjectives ‘rapid’ and ‘hasty’ emphasise the quick firing of rifles, whilst

the alliteration in ‘rifles rapid rattle’ is aural imagery of the battlefield as it is

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further combined with onomatopoeia such as ‘patter’ and ‘wailing shells’ emphasises the horror of the battlefield

• The archaic language of ‘orisons’ is used by Owen to show that the modern world that was cruelly born in WW1 has discarded traditional funeral rites, symbolising they have also discarded the spiritual value that was once placed on human life

• He is also criticising the Churchmen who saw war as a holy cause when the reality was actually against religious value

• The alliterative negatives in ‘no mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;/Nor any voice of mourning…’) emphasises the horror and suffering of war

• The only ‘choirs’ accompanying the soldier’s death’s is that of gunfire and ‘wailing shells’- the onomatopoeia emphasises that there would be no com-fort in traditional funeral rites as their deaths are a waste

• The sibilant personified ‘sad shires’ shows the change in world values as previously each of these deaths would have been mourned individually as members of a community, not dehumanised as part of mass destruction

• The main concern about the pity of war can be seen in the use of personifi-cation in ‘monstrous guns’ as there is no dignity in anonymous deaths, just as a waste of youth

• He re-emphasises this idea with his use of ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in the poem’s conclusion

• The rhetorical question that opens this sestet suggests the soldiers will only be remembered through the grief of their loved ones. The government and church will not mourn for them

• The symbolism in ‘each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds’- symbolises not only the end of day English custom of closing the blinds whilst in mourn-ing, but also the ‘drawing down’ or end of the soldier’s lives

• The emotive language of ‘tenderness of patient minds’ establishes grieving at home for the soldiers will be greater than grieving on the battlefield

• The brevity of the poem with its tight structure and economic language is used by Owen to reinforce the soldier’s unnaturally shortened life span and shows Owen’s disdain for the war

• However, Owen shows understanding of the powerlessness of those at home to stop the senseless killing of the doomed youth making the poem a combination of poignancy and bitterness, emphasising his criticism of the brutality of war

Futility Techniques• Instructional language: heightened by the use of present tense impera-

tives (‘Move him in the sun’)• Symbol of life: depicted in positive term as a gentle force (‘sun’)

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• Personification: warmth/ gentle giver of life and heat- a possible saviour for this man. (‘Gently it’s touch awoke him once’)

• Nostalgic references: to home with connotations to peace and safety (‘at home’)

• Assonance: the letter ‘o’ creates a long drawn out sound, reflecting his dis-tance from home (‘whispering of field unsown’)

• Placement of ‘always’ emphasises the contrast with ‘until’- shows they’re desperate and refuse to accept he is dead

• Personification: gentle and father figure (‘The kind old sun will know’)• Extended metaphor: sun as father and developer of life itself (‘Think how it

wakes the seeds’)• Allusion: to scientific origins of life on Earth (‘Woke, once, the clays of a

cold star’)• Punctuation: dashes and commas separating out each phrase suggests

searching for signs of life• Rhetorical question: becomes more and more demanding and ironic or

bitter in tone as they increase in number

Notes• Owen speak of the problem of evil in the world , and the question - if human

existence is inevitably prone to evil then life is futile• The title of this poem captures this theme: the pointlessness of human sac-

rifice and life itself• The poem is an example of how Owen’s poetry is also relevant to larger is-

sues of human existence• Owen challenges the belief of the glory of war and the honour of sacrificing

one’s life for one’s country• Poem opens gently but dramatically with the imperative verb in the present

tense: ‘Move him into the sun’ is a positive gesture that is hoped will be re-viving

• Owen juxtaposes the tranquility and beauty of rural England with the hideous battlefield of France: ‘Gently its touch awoke him once,/At home, whispering of fields unsown’

• Now the sun’s warmth is powerless to raise and Owen contrasts the sun’s rejuvenating warmth with the wintry world of death, shown through the metaphor ‘until this morning and this snow’

• Owen closes the first stanza in speculation that the dead soldier might nonetheless be raised: ‘If anything might rouse him now/The kind old sun will know.’ The affectionate personification of the sun might seem encourag-ing, but can also be a way of dismissing the sun, mocking it.

• It has a child-like, nursery rhyme quality, which suggests the speaker knows the soldier cannot be roused, although he wants to believe he can be

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• In the second stanza, Owen begins focusing on the soldier’s body, but pro-cesses from his death to a questioning of the entire universe and the rea-son for our existence. The sun is praised here as the first life giver and as the perpetual renewer of creation, so why can it not revive the body? This is shown through the quotes ‘Think how it wakes the seeds,-/Woke, once, the clays of a cold star’ and ‘Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,/Full-nerved,- still warm,- too hard to stir?’

• The reference to clay is a biblical illusion as God breathed life into Adam by breathing life into clay, suggesting the creation of all life that surely the power of the sun could raise

• The anguished tone of the poem increases through the use of rhetorical questions ‘was it for the the clay grew tall?’ How can human beings be cut down without any resurrection?

• The poem questions the meaning of life ‘what made fatuous sunbeams toil/To break earth’s sleep at all?’ Here Owen has moved from the personi-fied kindness of the sun to the idea the sun is now fatuous- idiotic and pur-poseless

• The passion of his query is emphasised by ‘O’ as he wonders why the Earth, which permits such cruelty to its creatures, was ever brought to life in the first place

• Owen’s uses of three questions in the second stanza makes the audience query their own existence, not simply the fate of the soldier

• ‘Futility’ expresses Owen’s rejection of the idea of goodness and the pur-pose of human existence

• The tone of the poem is despairing. The short, simple images and colloquial language makes the poem universally accessible and as such, the poem has lasting relevance through its moral questions about the purpose for life

InsensibilityTechniquesStanza 1• Personification: highlights their emotion and stress (‘Can let their veins run

cold’)• Enjambment: Evokes the idea that as the men marched, the poet contem-

plates the realities of what men were forced to become (‘Or makes their feet/Sore…’)

• Explicit diction: soldiers become so brutalised that they are then to mock war at the expense of empathising (‘Whom no compassion fleers’)

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• Archaic language: emphasises their desensitisation- metaphor (‘cobbled with their brothers’)

• Nature imagery/metaphor: everything is being leached from soldiers (‘The front line withers’)

• High modality: poet’s personal experience (‘But they are troops who fade, not flowers’)

• Metaphor: not seen as human at all. They are replaced when they die and are collateral damage (‘Men, gaps for filling’)

• Euphemism: objectifying humanity (‘Losses’)• Grim irony: So many corpses- they are part of the soldier’s lives now

(‘Longer, but no one bothers’)

Stanza 2• General pronoun: ‘Some’ experience loss of personal integrity• Repetition: they have lost care for themselves (‘Even themselves or for

themselves’)• Negative imagery: describes their copy mechanism (‘Dullness best

solves’)• Personification: represents psychological reaction to stress and tension of

situation. (‘The tease and doubt of shelling’)• Personification: shows how the men rationalise their survival to achieve a

genuine sense of dissocation from the humanity of their actions (‘And Chance’s strange arithmetic’)

• Metaphor: for the lack of calculation in the selection of victims

Stanza 3 • Repetition: mocks their spirit and imagination which has been taken away

(‘Happy’)• Irony: people who are happy are lacking intellectual sensibility (‘Happy are

those who lose imagination’)• Contrast: between the physical and psychological burdens (‘Their spirit

drags no pack’)• Inversion: adds emphasis (‘can not more ache’)• Repetition: which stresses what they have been forced to experience (‘Of

the hurt of the colour of blood forever’)• Metaphor: for the fear and initial panic of death that has become dull from

its consistency (‘And terror’s first constriction over’)• Metaphor: of deliberate burning away of memory/guilt (‘Their senses in

some cautery of battle’)• Juxtaposition: of laughing and dying shows the blurring of emotional lines

(‘Now long since ironed,/Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned’)

Stanza 4

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• Irony: those at home are ignorant of the truth of war (‘Happy the soldier home, with not a notion’)

• Euphemism: for death (‘And many sighs are drained’)• Juxtaposition: the uninitiated and the taciturn veteran (‘When we march

taciturn’)• Metaphor and visual imagery: They are moving towards their death (‘The

long, forlorn, relentless trend’)

Stanza 5• Change in perspective: to general’s view• Anaphora: emphasises the loss and madness setting in at war (‘Nor sad,

nor proud,/Nor curious at all’)• Repetition: of negative terms, stresses their emotional deterioration (‘Not

mortal overmuch… Nor sad, nor proud/ Nor curious… He cannot’)

Stanza 6• Metaphor: for the callous and unfeeling (‘as stones’)• Bitterness: of Owen’s rebuke (‘Wretched are they’)• Anaphora: emphasises the angry retort at the nothingness of the voices

(‘Whatever mourns…/Whatever shares’)

Notes• A bitter comment on the futility of war and its role in turning into robots• Owen explores the paradox of mindless soldiers being ‘happy men’ through

the extensive use of irony, para-rhyme and figurative language• Satire is used by Owen in the title and to structure the poem• The simplicity of the title ‘Insensibility’ is ambiguous as it contains a dual

perspective• The audience wonders whether the title refers to the soldier’s forced insen-

sibility in war or to the insensibility of people who have never been con-fronted with the idea of war

• The juxtaposition of the two ideas is further highlighted through the struc-ture of the poem. The poem is often seen as a response to the question ‘Who is the happy warrior/Who is he/That every man in arms should wish to be?’ asked by William Wordsworth in his poem ‘The Character of the Happy Warrior’.

• Where Wordsworth’s poem is a glorification of war, Owen’s tone is bitter and cynical

• This is further accentuated as the poem is written as an ode, divided into six parts, which, instead of praising war, actually condemns it

• In the first stanza, Owen presents his first ideal of the happy soldier. His ironic attitude towards this is shown through the paradox of happy men whose ‘veins run cold’ and whom ‘no compassion fears’. The paradox is the

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soldiers’ belief that the only way to survive war is by destroying l human emotion

• The juxtaposition of ‘alleys cobbled with their brothers’ left ‘gaps for filling’ is reflective of the two contrasting outlooks of the soldiers and the generals in London towards their fellow men

• The juxtaposition puts further emphasis on the dehumanising effect of the war on soldiers, whose worth is measured in numbers rather than emotions

• The use of cacophonic diction such as ‘cobbled’ allows the reader to em-pathise with the soldier’s hostility

• Through this paradox Owen effectively highlights the desensitising effect of war not only on the soldiers but also on the general public

• As the poem progresses, the portrayal of soldiers as mechanical becomes more prominent

• This is reflected in the second stanza as Owen highlights that ‘dullness best solves’ the effects of the war

• Repetition of this idea in soldiers ‘who love imagination’ are also happy, as ‘they have enough to carry’. Owen’s portrayal of ‘imagination’ as a physical burden emphasises the need to be insensible in the war

• Owen’s shocking sense of casualness is highlighted through the use of para-rhymes such as ‘shelling’ and ‘shilling’, and ‘red’ and ‘rid. The use of para-rhyme adds to the pace and action of the poem as well as a sense of disturbance and hostility to the mood of the poem

• This hostile atmosphere is accentuated through the last line of the third stanza ‘can laugh among the dying, unconcerned’. this hostile statement creates empathy for the soldiers and helps the audience realise the true horrors of war

• Owen’s use of multiple perspectives in each stanza aids in forming a con-nection between the scenarios. In the fourth stanza, the focus shifts from war to the use of propaganda in the homeland

• The use of personal pronouns ‘he’ and ‘we’ in ‘he sings along the march/Which we march taciturn’ provides the duality of meaning for ‘march’- the first idea represents the glory and pride of war whilst the second exposes the naivety of this idea as the reality is far different

• The harsh reality of war is further accentuated by the quantitive diction of ‘larger day to huger night’. This provides the reader with a sense of infinity that the horror of war will never end, emphasised by the symbolism of ‘huger night’ as the soldier’s death

• This change in tone from hopeful to hopeless helps juxtapose the insensitiv-ity of the soldiers with the insensitivity of their homelands

• In the fifth stanza the tone of the poem becomes more personal and pitiful, rather than being distant

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• Owen’s internal conflict is explored- how can he be ‘wise’ and an insensible soldier? We see his dilemma as in the first stanza he states that soldiers are ‘not flowers for poets’ fearful fooling’

• The extent of his emotional conflict is reflected as he juxtaposes his ‘soul’ with the ‘blunt and lashes eyes’ of the dead soldier

• The use of death and gruesome imagery reiterates the dehumanisation of soldiers, allowing the readers to empathise with Owen

• Within the sixth stanza the tone is angry, as Owen has an outburst at the ig-norant and cruel authorities in London that send soldiers to their death

• This is emphasised through his imagery in describing authorities as ‘wretched’ and dullards’ who are ‘as stone’. Through the metaphor of ‘stone’ the poet presents the authorities as cold and oblivious

• The difference between the two categories of insensibility: that of the sol-diers and that of the authorities is made clear ‘by choice they made them-selves immune’ with high modality of the word ‘choice’ clarifies the soldiers were forced to be immune in order to survive war

• However, the ending lines of the poem ‘whatever shares the eternal reci-procity of tears’ confronts the readers to decide who the ‘whatever’ is refer-ring to: the poet, the authorities, or the family, who mourns the dead sol-diers. This is what makes the poem so powerful

Strange Meeting TechniquesStanza 1• Low modality: establishes the dreamlike tone (‘It seemed’)• First person: suggests the speaker delivers but the second speaker deliv-

ers the scathing anti-war message • Metaphor: for the descent to Hell (‘Down some profound tunnel’)• Allusion: suggests the enormous scale of destruction (‘titanic wars’)• Juxtaposition and negative connotations: an underground place filled

with corpses in Hell (‘Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred’)• Atmospheric tension: built up through emotive verbs and adjectives- gives

greater impact to final line (‘Lifting distressful hands as if to bless’)• Repetition: creates irony- smiling in Hell (‘his smile… his dead smile’)

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• Horrific recognition: he is in Hell shown through a combination of allitera-tion, repetition and para-rhyme

Stanza 2• Hyperbole: conveys the worst fears and outer scars of torment (‘With a

thousand pains’)• Irony: Hell is providing them with an escape from the Hell of war (‘Yet no

blood reached there from the upper ground,/And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan’)

• Double entendre: ‘strange’ as in unknown and also an unlikely alliance (‘Strange friend’, ‘But mocks the steady running of the hour’)

• Dialogue: between the two enemies as they rue what they have lost• Parallels: drawn between the two soldiers (‘Whatever hope is yours,/Was

my life also’)• Alliteration: loss of potential influence on other (‘might many men have

laughed’)• Assonance: draws attention to the contrasting sides of his character (‘And

of my weeping something had been left’)• Repetition: pure pity of war (‘The pity of war, the pity war distilled’)• Repetition: denotes the savagery of future wars (‘They will be swift with the

swiftness of the tigress’)• Archaic language: cost of war is blood (‘Then, when much blood had

clogged their chariot-wheels’)

Stanza 3• Paradox: of enemy and friend as their enmity is eroded by shared experi-

ence (‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’)• Pronouns: show separation, but coming together in unity (‘I’ and ‘you’, then

‘us’ in the last line)• Ellipsis: suggests he can never sleep so war will never end (‘Let us sleep

now….’)

Notes• Rather than describing the violence of war on the battlefield, the poet at-

tacks war by instead placing the soldiers in hell, centring the poem around the civil conversation between two dead enemies

• This strips away the barrier between these two enemies and as a result, evokes not anger but pit, compassion and regret for both soldiers

• By juxtaposing the tranquility of peace and violent imagery of war and using precise diction and irony, the poet emphasises the cruel destructive pain war inflicts on mankind as neither soldier wins but lies helpless in hell due to their involvement in the war

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• The tone is sombre and regretful, shown through the images of ‘dull tunnel’, ‘sullen hall’, ‘titanic wars had groined’

• Phrases such as ‘encumbered sleepers groaned’ use onomatopoeia and personification to add to the death-like setting

• By depicting Hell not as a traditional fiery pit of destruction but as a mind-numbing plane of existence, without strong feelings or emotions, estab-lishes a setting of pity, rather than anger

• In stark contrast to the numbness of Hell, the poet conveys the pain and re-gret of war using horrific imagery

• The poet evokes pain as a humanising quality so that we pity the soldier• The metaphor of ‘carnal, vicious, swiftness of the tigress’ is used to de-

scribe the violent attacks during the war while the image of the soldier’s face ‘ingrained with a thousand pains’ uses internal rhyme to stir pity

• This carnal ruthlessness is emphasised further through the metaphor of ‘the pity war distilled’ as the poet illustrates how war strips away a man’s ability to reason and be compassionate

• He also uses the metaphor of a dirty wound to describe the war itself metaphorically the soldier alludes to his regret or adding to the war now that he is aware of the ugliness of it

• Thus when the soldier states ‘the foreheads of man have bled where no wounds were’, Owen uses a metaphor to express his disgust at the ugli-ness of war and its ability to ruin the ‘have bled where no wounds were’, for Owen believes that war’s only purpose is to disfigure or ruin mankind’s exis-tence

• In the archaic language ‘blood that clogged the chariot-wheels’, both literally and metaphorically addresses the idea that war will always be part of the human condition

• The poet also draws sympathy by juxtaposing these violent images with the tranquility of peace that the soldiers would have had without the war

• The regretful tone in ‘went hunting wild/After the wildest beauty in the world’ and the use of personification emphasises what he lost when he died in the war

• The pain and regret is only heightened by the helplessness the soldier feels, for he knows the war will continue ‘men will go content with what we spoiled/ Or discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled’ emphasised by the emo-tive language used

• Although the soldier knows the truth about war, he knows mankind will con-tinue to fight wars. He feels helpless because as he cannot tell his com-rades the truth before he is dead, the truth remains untold and this helpless-ness effectively shows how war strips men of any control over their lives

• By emphasising the soldier’s loss of control over his life as a result of the war, Owen effectively shows how war amounts to nothing but destruction

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• Owen effectively illustrates the universal destructive nature of war in the fi-nal stanza, which contains a clever twist of irony

• Owen does not reveal the identity of the second soldier so the phrases ‘with piteous recognition’ and ‘strange friend’ surprise the reader that the two sol-diers became friends, joined by common experiences, although they were once enemies

• It is only after effectively establishing empathy for the second soldier by vividly describing his pain that Owen reveals the identity of the second sol-dier- the enemy the narrator killed on earth, shown through the irony of ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’

• The irony heightens the cruelty of war because the soldier’s identity as the enemy does not lessen the pain he suffered in war as it merely place the narrator in the same position ‘whatever hope was yours/was my life also’

• By making the two men converse as friends when they were really enemies in life, Owen emphasises that the pain is universal for both sides

• The fact that both men are in Hell, condemned for slaughtering others, gives the poem its power and Owen uses the ellipses in the final stanza to suggest that not only for these soldiers, but for all mankind, war will never end- a prophetic condemnation

• Owen felt it was his duty to convey the truth about war and the terrible scars it left on all

The Next WarTechniques• Inclusive pronouns: he and other soldiers have experienced death or near

death experiences, but others have not (‘we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death’)

• Deranged humour/irony: war is no joke (‘War’s a joke for me and you/While we know such dreams are true’)

• Colloquial language: desensitised to death (‘Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland’)

• Personification: of Death as a vulgar and bad-mannered person (‘Par-doned his spilling mess-tins in our hand’)

• Enjambment: disrupts the rhythm of the poem to reflect the description of war (‘He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed/Shrapnel’)

• Onomatopoeia: a reminiscent sound of the shells falling (‘whistled’)

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• Anaphora: to show that death is sometimes welcomed during the war and shows the soldiers’ accepting view of death(‘We laughed… we leagued… We laughed’)

Notes• Friendly relationship with ‘Death’ not based on fear but companionship. Un-

welcome, yet unavoidable companion, cannot be repelled or ignored• However they are still aware of their ultimate fates whilst in his presence,

and yet they know that death and man are still rivals• Ironic of how he presents war as a picnic• Death with them constantly• Uses personification to demonstrate horrors of current war• Personal pronoun use- We’ve, him, his, our, we. Seems like Owen is with

them. Excludes those who weren’t present on the battlefields with Owen and the other soldiers. Could be a result of knowing that others will not un-derstand what they went through (and seeing them as part of the govern-ment who sent them to war), and share a bond in having a ‘friend’ like death

• Capital letter of Death- personified, acceptance of it• ‘Death was never the enemy of ours!’- they caused death and it was in-

flicted on them, and was accepted as part of life. It seems unnatural that they are friends with him

• Death shouldn’t be a friend, it should be an enemy, and men should fight against death. wars shouldn’t be against land and money, it should be against death

• Soldiers learn that death cannot be fought against so it is useless to ‘kick against its powers’

• Symbolism—>flags, related back to the fact that Owen’s poetry is focused on the waste-fulness of war. Flags show how land is fought over—>Siegfried Sassoon’s summation (war is a joke) implies that the best way to cope is by a combination of laughter and stoicism • Imagery—> Death is personified (eaten with him, green thick odour of his breath, spat bullets). He seems to be an old friend, but later on in poem appears to be feared—> Owen asserts that its insane to fight and die for theses countries when nothing will change as a result—> Not dispelled by graphic images of gore/suffering, instead uses ironic tone of a friendly relationship with death—> The soldier’s courage which ‘didn’t writhe’ is praised most in this poem—> Battlefield takes great ‘courage’ and laughter in the face of death and stoic acceptance of what cannot be changed

Page 15: Web viewWilfred Owen. Dulce et Decorum Est. Techniques. Stanza 1. Sarcasm/irony: opposite of poem’s actual content (title) Hyperbole: soldiers are old before their time and

ThemesEndurance• Inevitability of future• Stoic endurance of soldiers• Positive attitude of men who had to accept death• Raises admiration rather than sympathy• The fact that they were able to still manage to function and fight provokes

admiration • Monosyllabic words (cool, thick, wept) imitates short loud sounds of battle• Onomatopoeic words (spat, coughed)• Talks about how courage doesn’t waver• We whistled a while- coping strategy, like we laughed, shows trying to for-

get about what’s happening Death• Reoccurring extended metaphor of loss and waste• Raises issues of what can be learned from current horrors of war and vain.

They hope that death won’t take as many lives in the futureLanguage• Jocular tone- largely colloquial, use of jargon (mess tin, old chum)• Serves to down play their grim world• Repetition of ‘We laughed’ shows how men try to cope by putting horror be-

hind themFigures of Speech• Personification and extended metaphor makes reader aware of how death

has impacted them (very real and disgusting)• Onomatopoeia and alliteration- auditory devices used to capture sounds of

death’s weaponry of bullets and artillery• Isn’t described as the stereotyped view of the grim reaper, seems more dis-

torted and disgusting


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