Dulce Et Decorum Est: The Major Concerns Of Wilfred Owen’s Poetry

The close study of any text allows audiences to come to a stronger understanding of the way that language shapes meaning in order to create an individual response. The poetry of Wilfred Owen delves into the horrors and injustices of war. The poet does this through his clever use of language techniques to express his concern that war is detrimental to humanity. Owen set up an unheard-of precedent of uncovering the muffled facts to the public. We see that the central concepts that constantly arise, are those of the lack of respect shown to the soldiers after death and also the perceptions or realities of war are not what they seem.

Owen features the apprehension of the battlefields through his poem Anthem For Doomed Youth, where he highlights the bitter realism of war and its impact on soldiers. He again delves into the destitution of the memorial cultures in which soldiers were underprivileged by the other men, possibly because of the lack of time. Correspondingly he examines the equivalent theories of Dulce Et Decorum Est by depicting the cognitive agony of war on soldiers. In my opinion, I believe that these are the most concerning issues that ensue throughout Wilfred Owen’s poetry in particular.

Propaganda is a central idea that encompasses an idea for political gain. National leaders encouraged citizens to enrol and fight at war in order to achieve a political ideology. Wilfred Owen paints the picture to us as readers, of the horrors of war. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ is arguably Wilfred Owen’s ultimate acclaimed poem. Prior to WW1, most people believed it was honourable to fight for your country in war. In fact, this message was strongly supported by the government. Owen dispels this idea because he was a soldier in the war who experienced the horrors of it. It uses noticeable figurative language in order to describe the horrors of a gas attack. Owen’s main focus in this particular poem is to paint the picture of the soldiers’ inner mental dysfunctions and brainwash. We see in the quote “Men marched asleep” that war is not all we think it is. In this case, Owen is taking the mockery out of the outsider propaganda. Being confronted as a reader with this statement, we are exposed to the realities of the battlefield in which Owen and his fellow countrymen participated. By Owen recreating the horrors of war the reader begins to understand war is not sweet, nor is it honourable as it was being portrayed. As we become aware of the gas attack through the use of techniques, particularly by the use of metaphors and irony, Owen is able to convey the real experience of war. Honour encompasses the idea that we are proud of our achievements. Wilfred Owen, the World War One Poet, explores the notion that it is not honourable to die for your nation. This then creates confusion and conflicting ideas as a reader as the war was known to be honourable, this was a wanted technique by Owen tried up mostly to abolish this stereotype. Therefore, Wilfred Owen signifies and reveals the underlying message of the cognitive feelings of the soldiers that were not being confessed to the outer world.

In “Anthem for doomed youth” Wilfred Owen expresses his strong views about the brutality of war. As this poem focuses on the youth at the time, Owen forcefully exposes 2 of the human senses of sound and sight he does this in a way that the tone is simultaneously angry but also mournful. Wilfred Owen as a poet uses this particular simile as a rhetorical question, “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle”. By using the phase as a rhetorical question, forces the audience to determine whether or not the soldiers had a memorial along with what took effect on them as they passed away. Owen tries to convey the circumstance that there was an abundance of mortality and for that reason, it countermands the matter of the audacious and gallant actions that were devoted in the middle of battle stages. In the quote of “Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells”, In this instance, Wilfred Owen conveys the “wailing shells” as the only choir that will relive the existence of the decaying soldiers. Wilfred Owen overlooks the passing of soldiers as a boundless endure that should permit them a legitimate funeral. Although as we see in the poem this does not happen, although an ordinary human is chanted along with alluring melodies of singing thereafter they pass away.

Owen style of poem encapsulates the reader to feel a sense of grief as it is conveyed in a way of mockery to the actions and procedures of those involved. The poem acquires binary central principal moments that go on to be the absence of appreciation in the soldiers’ passings and those which ache to post the soldiers’ passing. The connotation and the mental state trailing Wilfred Owen’s poem establishes his individual life encounters. He was an enrolled soldier who clashed in World War I and also encountered abominable cases and the passings of those amongst him. The poem has an apologetic concern of soldiers which warrant further appreciation for enduring their living existence to assure their nation, also the crowd who continue to confront and ache thereafter the death of their soldiers.