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1. Dulce Et Decorum Est
Notes:
● Author​: Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
○ Born in Shropshire
○ Studied at London University
○ In 1915 enlisted the army
○ In 1916 he was commissioned
○ In 1917 he was wounded
○ At the hospital he knew his future husband and started writing together
○ He was convalesce in Scotland and in England
○ In 1918 he returned to combat
○ Was killed in action one week before Armistice
○ Belongs to the Lost Generation of World War I; talented young men
who, had they lived, probably would have become great writers.
■ a gift for poetry
○ Quote​: “This book is not about heroes. Above all, I am not concerned
with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of it. The poetry is in the
Pity......All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poets must
be truthful."
● War poetry
○ Poets come from a variety of backgrounds and religions.
○ They were influenced by georgian poetry movement
● Poem​:
○ reveals an ironic distrust of all the traditional ideologies
■ have kept soldiers fighting.
○ The theme is "it is honourable to die for your country",
■ Intended as irony
○ Gas attack

2. ● Stanzas:
1) It talks about the life at the trenches. The poor lifestyle and the bad conditions.
Being tired and cold, but having to make an effort to survive.
2) This stanza is about what it took to survive the war. Alerting bombs so that the
soldiers could look for shelter.
3) In this stanza the poet is able to portray the impact of the war. He is able to
express his feelings and paranoia towards his friend’s life.
4) This stanza reveals the real atrocities of war and the poet points out who has
the blame for them. There is also a strong criticism to the government and to
the church.

3. ● Images:​ horrifying
○ It it's full of visual and auditory images describing the trenches and the
combat scenes.
● Title:
○ Meaning "It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland."
■ It is ironic since the poet says that it is honorable to die for your
own country, but what he is actually trying to say is that war is
death, is hell, and there is nothing honorable on that. He
denounces the government and the church and claims that they
should stop saying “the old lie”.
Blog Activity
(​http://pchujman.cumbresblogs.com/2018/06/04/dulce-et-decorum-est-and-othe
r-war-poems/​ )
Task 1
First Stanza:
1. What is the main ​emotion​ expressed in the first stanza (verse)?
Owen portrays the soldiers exhaustion and oppression of war through the use of
visual, tactile and auditory images. He is able to introduce a painful and suffering
mood, by describing the condition soldiers are in. “Men marched asleep. Many had
lost their boots, but limped on, blood-shed.” Through the development of
punctuation, the poet achieves portraying a dramatic opening to emphasise the
soldiers lifestyle in the trenches. By using many punctuation symbols, the port is able
to create a pausing poem, that symbolizes the soldiers actions. The poem is as slow
as the soldiers.
2. Write an example of a ​simile​ used in the first stanza:
By using the expression “Like old beggars under sacks” the author is able to
compare how war transforms fit and young soldiers into weak and filthy ones.
3. Why were the shells ‘​disappointed​’?
Through the personification of the shells, the poet explains the fact that they are
disappointed because of the fact that they failed. They missed their target,

4. “gas-shells dropping softly behind”. Moreover, we can also relate the fact that they
are {disappointed} because they pretended to point at the soldiers, but they missed.
Second Stanza:
1. How does the ​emotion change​ at the beginning of the second stanza?
At the end of the first stanza the mood was one of exhaustion and unawareness. But
now, the poet changes the mood to one of alertness and worry. As the voice is now
using exclamation marks and is talking to his mates, the atmosphere transforms into
one of panic as they are under attack. “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!”, the voice is
desperetly shouting and the atmosphere is tense.
2. What were the soldiers ‘​fumbling​’ for and ​why?
The soldiers were fumbling because there had been a gas bomb released in the
trench and people were desperately looking for their helmets to protect themselves.
Through the following visual image, we are able to know in how much panic they
were. “An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time”. We are able to
understand their concern about putting their helmets on since they were in a
catastrophic situation.
3. Owen uses a ​metaphor​ to describe what the gas looked like. Write it
here:
The metaphor used to describe the agony that the soldier is in is portrayed in the
repetition of the colour “green”. This colour symbolizes the sheds, the bombs in order
to emphasize the pain he is going through. In the quote “Dim through the misty
panes and thick green light, as under a green sea,”, the word green is repeated
several times in order to connote the suffering. We found very ironic the fact that the
poet uses this vivid and natural colour to represent something so obscure such as
death and catastrophe, the bomb, since it is usually used for describing life. War is
clearly the opposite of it.
Third Stanza:
1. Why​ do you think the third stanza is only two lines long? Think about
the ​dramatic effect ​and the emotion
The reason why stanza three is only two lines long is because it connotes the
traumatic effects of war. It shows how shocking and life threatening war can be and it
portrays how events experienced at war accompany men through their entire life.
“He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”, this shows how the voice is still
dreaming with his dead friend, though the event has passed a long time ago.

5. Fourth Stanza:
1. What is the main emotion expressed in the fourth stanza?
The poet, in the final stanza, addresses the reader directly to reveal the real
atrocities of war. By criticizing the government and the church, he points out the
question of who has the blame for the events taking place at it. Through the use of a
patriotism theme, he explains his thoughts about war. He highlights the fact that
soldiers are not heroes for going to fight, which is all a lie. So his main emotion is
related with a realistic one, since his aim is to reveal the truth about combat.
2. Name three parts of the body that are affected by this sort of gas:
The gas affects the eyes, the lungs and the tongue. To start with, it affects the eyes.
We can understand how they were affected in the following visual image “the white
eyes writhing in his face”. This portrays the pain and the suffering that the soldiers
were constantly exposed to. Moreover, the lungs are affected too, “the blood Come
gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. This emphasizes the grief they felt. Finally,
the poet also reveals the fact that the tongue was damaged as well, “incurable sores
on innocent tongues”.
3.Explain the final lines.
The final lines of the poem convey with the truth according to the voice. He highlights
the reality of war and talks about what people usually say during it “It is sweet and
fitting to die for one’s country.” he conveys this theme and remarks the fact that it is
all an “old lie”. By emphasizing the fact that men are sent to war, to fight against their
own will, to hell, portrays how dying for your own country is everything but honorable.
So defending your nation and dying for it is worthless, it is an old lie.
Personal Opinion:
The poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, written by Wilfred Owen, is one about war. The
poet wants the reader to know that warfare is anything but glorious so he portrays a
gloomy, realistic, human picture of life at the frontline. In order to achieve
transmitting its message, he exposes the “old lie: It is sweet and fitting to die for
one’s country.” He expresses, in an ironic way, how worthless and stupid it is to send
young people to fight as war weaken them. The poet is able to express this message
by using metaphors, similes, alliterations and images. On the one hand, he uses
images to expose the soldiers lifestyle. Through the following simile, we are able to
understand their situation in war as they are compared with beggars: “like old
beggars under sacks”. The fact that they are compared with poor and miserable
people emphasizes how war has damaged them since it has transformed them into
filthy people. Moreover, the poet emphasises this emption by writing the following
alliteration: “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots”. The alliterative m
represents the fact that there were Many Men who suffered from war. Not only the
ones who died at it, but also the relatives and the friends who had to move on with
that death. Another simile the poet used to describe the soldiers pain is one related

6. with the devil: “like a devil's sick of sin”. By comparing the dead soldier (or the soldier
in pain) with the devil, makes the poet achieve to describe his physical aspect, his
white face. That represents death. So throughout the poem, Owen is trying to explain
the inefficiency of war by presenting a patriotism theme and criticising the church
and the government of saying that “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”,
when for the poet, is not. For him, It is all a lie.