essay about dulce et decorum est

Dulce et Decorum Est Summary & Analysis by Wilfred Owen

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Like most of Owen's work, it was written between August 1917 and September 1918, while he was fighting in World War 1. Owen is known for his wrenching descriptions of suffering in war. In "Dulce et Decorum Est," he illustrates the brutal everyday struggle of a company of soldiers, focuses on the story of one soldier's agonizing death, and discusses the trauma that this event left behind. He uses a quotation from the Roman poet Horace to highlight the difference between the glorious image of war (spread by those not actually fighting in it) and war's horrifying reality.

• Read the full text of “Dulce et Decorum Est”

The Full Text of “Dulce et Decorum Est”

1 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

2 Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

3 Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

4 And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

5 Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

6 But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

7 Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

8 Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

9 Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

10 Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

11 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

12 And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

13 Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

14 As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

15 In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

16 He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

17 If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

18 Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

19 And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

20 His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

21 If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

22 Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

23 Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

24 Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

25 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

26 To children ardent for some desperate glory,

27 The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

28 Pro patria mori .

“Dulce et Decorum Est” Summary

“dulce et decorum est” themes.

The Horror and Trauma of War

• See where this theme is active in the poem.

The Enduring Myth that War is Glorious

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “dulce et decorum est”.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

Lines 11-14

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

Lines 15-16

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Lines 17-20

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

Lines 21-24

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

Lines 25-28

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori .

“Dulce et Decorum Est” Symbols

The Dying Soldier

• See where this symbol appears in the poem.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Knock-kneed
• Haunting flares
• Flound'ring
• Froth-corrupted
• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Dulce et Decorum Est”

Rhyme scheme, “dulce et decorum est” speaker, “dulce et decorum est” setting, literary and historical context of “dulce et decorum est”, more “dulce et decorum est” resources, external resources.

Biography of Wilfred Owen — A detailed biographical sketch of Wilfred Owen's life, including analysis of his work.

An Overview of Chemical Warfare — A concise historical account of the development of chemical weapons, with detailed descriptions of the poison gases used in WWI.

Listen to "Dulce et Decorum Est" — A recording of "Dulce et Decorum Est," provided by the Poetry Foundation.

Representing the Great War — The Norton Anthology's overview of literary representation of World War I, with accompanying texts. This includes two of Jessie Pope's patriotic poems, as well as poems by Siegfried Sassoon and others and various contemporary illustrations. It also suggests many additional resources for exploration.

Horace, Ode 3.2 — One translation of the Horace ode that the lines "Dulce et Decorum Est" originally appear in. 

Digital Archive of Owen's Life and Work — An archive of scanned documents from Owen's life and work, including his letters, as well as several handwritten drafts of "Dulce et Decorum Est" and other poems.

The White Feather — A brief personal essay about the treatment of conscientious objectors in WWI-era Britain.

LitCharts on Other Poems by Wilfred Owen

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Mental Cases

Spring Offensive

Strange Meeting

The Next War

Everything you need for every book you read.

A Short Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’

By Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ or, to give the phrase in full: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori , Latin for ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’ ( patria is where we get our word ‘patriotic’ from). The phrase originated in the Roman poet Horace, but in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) famously rejects this idea.

For Owen, who had experienced the horrors of trench warfare and a gas attack, there was nothing sweet, and nothing fitting, about giving one’s life for one’s country. Focusing in particular on one moment in the First World War, when Owen and his platoon are attacked with poison gas, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is a studied analysis of suffering and perhaps the most famous anti-war poem ever written.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori .

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’: background

In October 1917, Wilfred Owen wrote to his mother from Craiglockhart Hospital: ‘Here is a gas poem, done yesterday……..the famous Latin tag (from Horace, Odes) means of course it is sweet and meet to die for one’s country. Sweet! and decorous!’

Although he drafted the poem that October, the surviving drafts of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ show that Owen revised and revisited it on several occasions thereafter, before his death the following November – one week before the Armistice.

Although he wrote all his poetry while he was still a young man – he died aged just 25, like the poet he so admired, John Keats – Wilfred Owen was a master of form and metre, although the extent to which ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is carefully structured is not necessarily apparent from reading it (and certainly not from hearing it read aloud).

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’: form

The first two stanzas, comprising eight lines and six lines respectively, form a traditional 14-line sonnet, with an octave (eight-line section) and sestet (six-line section).

The line break after the fourteenth line only brings this home: there’s a pause, and then we find ourselves returning to the word ‘drowning’, locked in it, fixating on that word, ‘drowning’ to describe the helpless state of the poor soldier suffocating from poison gas. The helplessness, of course, is Owen’s too, being unable to do anything for his falling comrade: all we can do is watch in horror.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’: imagery

The imagery is as striking and memorable as the structure, though a little more explicit: the first stanza bombards us with a series of similes for the exhausted men trudging through mud (‘like old beggars’, ‘coughing like hags’) and more direct metaphors (‘blood-shod’ suggesting feet caked in blood, implying trench-foot and cut legs; with ‘shod’ putting us in mind of horses, perhaps being used to plough a very different kind of muddy field; and ‘drunk with fatigue’ bitterly reminding us that this isn’t some sort of beer-fuelled jolly, a bunch of friends out for a night on the town).

Then we are shocked by the double cry of ‘Gas! GAS!’ at the beginning of the second stanza, with the two successive heavy stresses grabbing our attention, much as the cry from one soldier to his comrades is designed to – and they all fumble for their masks, struggling to put them in place to protect them against the deadly gas attack.

Even after he physically witnessed the soldier dying from the effects of the poison gas, Owen cannot forget it: it haunts his dreams, a recurring nightmare. The recurrence of the word ‘drowning’ neatly conveys this.

In that final stanza, Owen turns what until now has been a descriptive poem into a piece of anti-war propaganda, responding with brilliant irony to the patriotic poets such as Jessie Pope (whom Owen specifically has in mind here), who wrote jingoistic doggerel that encouraged young men to enlist and ‘do their bit for king and country’.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’: further analysis

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin …

If people like Pope, Owen argues, addressing her directly (‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace…’), could witness what he has witnessed, and were forced to relive it in their dreams and waking thoughts every day and night, they would not in all good conscience be able to write such pro-war poetry, knowing they were encouraging more men to share the horrific fate of the soldier Owen had seen killed.

Jessie Pope and her ilk would not be able to feed the ‘Old Lie’, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori , to impressionable young men (some of them so young they are still ‘children’: it’s worth remembering that some boys lied about their age so they could join up) who are ‘ardent for some desperate glory’.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is a fine example of Owen’s superb craftsmanship as a poet: young he may have been, and valuable as his poetry is as a window onto the horrors of the First World War, in the last analysis the reason we value his response to the horrific events he witnessed is that he put them across in such emotive but controlled language, using imagery at once true and effective.

As he put it in the draft preface he wrote for his poems: ‘My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.’

Image (top): Wilfred Owen (author unknown: image taken from 1920 edition of  Poems of Wilfred Owen ),  Wikimedia Commons . Image (bottom): John Singer Sargent,  Gassed , via Wikimedia Commons .

8 thoughts on “A Short Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’”

• Pingback: 10 Classic Wilfred Owen Poems Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature
• Pingback: The Best War Poems Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature

Excellent analysis of a great poem.

Thank you :)

Wilfred Owen is one of the many talented war poets that inspired me to love literature!

Good piece here on a powerful poem. And I still think ‘Disabled’ is his best…

• Pingback: Sunday Post – 11th March, 2018 | Brainfluff

A very good analysis of one of my favourite poems. Arguably the best of any war poet.

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Anger and futility: Wilfred Owen and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’

Death, war, and writing about death in war (4)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; nk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— rough the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

If Tennyson seeks to turn a futile, devastating military campaign into the glorification of soldiers’ bravery and group focus, Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et decorum est is a relentless and harsh critique of the degrading, damaging, and sickening reality of war. The battlefield, especially the battlefields of World War One, Owen asserts, prohibit a soldier from dying a ‘good death’, for there is nothing good about the trenches.

The poem, published after the end of the war in 1921, opens with a visceral description of the physical baggage of being a soldier in trench warfare. The men are ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’, and Owen rhymes ‘sludge’ with ‘trudge’ to emphasise the grimy, unforgiving environment of the trenches. In the second stanza, Owen witnesses a man die as a result of chemical warfare:      

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

There is nothing that is good about this man’s death. There is no purpose, no aesthetic beauty or glory, no nobility of spirit. Instead, ‘flound’ring’, the man is helpless; ‘As under a green sea’ he is utterly displaced: ‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.’ The unnamed soldier’s death is characterised with pain, meaninglessness, and a loss of control.

The trauma of witnessing this death is ongoing and pervasive: ‘In all my dreams before my helpless sight’ the poet sees this man’s death. Death in war, the poet suggests, is never one-time only; it is a repeated injury on those who witnessed that individual’s fall; and being made a witness to such a painful and futile death renders the viewer ‘helpless’. But it is not a helplessness that leaves Owen silent. Rather, his is the angry resistance of a soldier who denies the glory of a battlefield, who resents the equation of patriotic duty and military death as a formula resulting in personal glory. He turns his poem into a plea to all people holding any position of authority, political or social, to end the perpetuation of the equation of patriotic duty with a noble death. Instead, Owen rejects as ‘The old Lie’ Horace’s claim that it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country, the capitalisation of ‘Lie’ suggesting that Horace’s sentiment is so dangerous because it has become an archetype. ‘For Queen and country’, we might say now, to which Wilfred Owen might tell us, don’t believe that. It is never worth it, and it never was. 

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Good Dulce ET Decorum EST Essay Example

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: War , Soldiers , Poem , World , Veterans , Terrorism , Poetry , Literature

Words: 1250

Published: 02/22/2020

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The aim of this essay is to present you with a portrait and analysis of the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. This is a poem titled in a Latin phrase which goes on in the first verse saying ‘Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori’. This Latin phrase borrowed by Horace, the Latin poet, means that it is sweet and ideal for one to die for his / her country. The poem was written by Wilfred Owen in 1917. The year this poem was written there was a war going on and this was the World War I. According to sources ‘the earliest surviving manuscript of the poem is dated 8 October 1917’ (retrieved from www. Wikipedia.com). The poem was published in 1920 and has been appealing to its readers ever since. The essay will focus on the meaning of the poem, its impact on readers and reflections drawn upon its reading. Wilfred Owen borrowed Horace’s words to title his poem in which he wishes to state a totally different idea from the one expressed by its title. One would probably expect to read a poem that talks about the significance and ethical value lying in fighting for one’s country in order to stand against enemies and dangers of his / her country, his /her culture and his / her family. On the contrary the words of the title are used by Wilfred Owen in an ironic and sarcastic way so that the poet manages to put across his message which is fully an anti-war message. The imagery and rhythm used by Owen is putting across the faces and tortured bodies of soldiers fighting for a cause which they have not chosen, sacrificing their lives for their countries and cultures and national identities which one way or the other were like the poet wants to emphasize condemned to fall in the trap of political games played in the backstage. War has always been considered one of the worst evils which could fall upon humanity and has always been found to have been provoked by conflicts occurring within the political and economic relationships of countries and states. World War I was a war whose effect was such that worldwide people seemed to realize that they all ought to deal with their differences in such a way that wars are avoided. Nevertheless, human history repeated itself with the World War II to reach the top of misery and unhappiness imposed on people all over the world. It is common knowledge that poetry serves as a kind of vehicle which moves all around the world without being prevented by distances or time gaps in order to express feelings of its creators, worldwide feelings, concerns, agonies and fears. Poems seem to speak to people’s hearts managing to raise concern and thoughts on worldwide events as well as personal situations. The poem is divided in four stanzas. The first verses of the first stanza ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge’ refers to the image of soldiers be crippled, walking like dead corpses. In line 5 of the poem ‘Men marched asleep.’ and this verse highlights that men are like zombies. This is what war does to people. War makes people lose their humanity, lose their feelings, lose their sense and substance of existence. Wilfred Owen uses realistic images. He does not want to talk in calm, peaceful voice. He wants to emphasize on the terror of the war and in order to manage to do so he needs to use words and images which depict the horror and the dreadful aura. After the middle of line five the poet has a pause in the line which in poetry is called a caesura and this is done on purpose so that the poet manages to depict the depth and meaning of his words and images. He goes on after the middle of line five (5) ‘Many had lost their boots, / But limped on, blood-shod.’ The image of the soldiers who seem destroyed both physically and mentally goes on. All these words with the repetition of the sound ‘l’ makes the tongue repeating her voice in such a way that all words keep their voices strong enough and loud. The poet starts notifying us on the total lack of any point in the march the soldiers are performing, the soldiers seem to have entered a march with no specific goal, with no specific destination. In lines 7-8 the soldiers are ‘Drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots / of tired, outstripped Five – Nines that dropped behind.’ The Five –Nines are the gas shells and even the equipment of the soldiers seems destroyed and useless. The poem goes on in the same rhythm and theme. And in the second stanza in lines 13-14 the narrator of the poem ‘Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,/ As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.’ sees a man drowning in the green fog created by the war and the weapons and the gas. A man is drowning but no name is needed to be given and this man in the third stanza in lines 15-16 ‘In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, and drowning.’ The man is asking for the narrator’s help. He wants to avoid his death but the narrator is helpless. It is the terror of the war which drowns people and nothing can be done in order to be saved. It is not clearly stated by the poet that the war is useless and causes only extra pain but this is what the poet seems to want to emphasize on. The poem goes on in the last stanza, the fourth one in lines 21-24 ‘If you could hear at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–’ to show more emphasis on the terror of the war and its ugliness. War is like cancer. Cancer is a disease which folds one body in its ugliness and pain. This is what war is like. It folds people’s bodies and souls into ugliness, the awakening of bad insticts, the animal-like behavior, and the total loss of humanity. In the following lines 25-27 ‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie:’ the poet finally addresses his audience with the real meaning of his message. He does not just wish to give an image of the war’s terror. He wants to prove to people that any war no matter defensive or attacking is violent, disastrous and catastrophic. This is what Wilfred Owen wants to put across to the people of his generation and the future one. He wants to tell people that it is not honor to fight for your country. Because dying for your country may be an ideal of older times which by no means can be applied to nowadays demands. People ought to realize that they only have one choice if they want to survive and have a good quality of life and that is their harmonic co-existence and co-operation through a healthy dialogue.

Works cited

Shakel, Peter, Ridl Jack, ‘Approaching Literature: Writing, Reading, Thinking’ Bedford/St. Martin's; 2nd edition (December 24, 2007) Wilfred,Owen ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ (1917) retrieved from www. Wikipedia.com

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Dulce Et Decorum Est — Comparative Analysis Of Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est And Brooke’s The Soldier

"Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "The Soldier": a Comparison of The Poems

• Categories: Dulce Et Decorum Est Literary Criticism Poetry

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Words: 1234 |

Published: Aug 6, 2021

Words: 1234 | Pages: 2 | 7 min read

• Norgate, P. (1989). Wilfred Owen and the soldier poets. The Review of English Studies, 40(160), 516-530. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/517098)
• Hughes, J. (2006). Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est. The Explicator, 64(3), 164-166. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/EXPL.64.3.164-166?journalCode=vexp20)
• Zawierucki, R. (2015). Heroes or cannon fodder? Images of the soldier in British Great War poetry. (https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/handle/item/205805)
• Corcoran, N. (2007). Wilfred Owen and the poetry of war. the cambridge companion to twentieth-century english poetry, 87-101. (https://www.academia.edu/43528900/The_Cambridge_Companion_to_Twentieth_Century_English_Poetry)
• Wright, W. (2002). Hardy and Owen on World War I : Explications and a Comparative Analysis of" The Man He Killed" and" Dulce et Decorum Est". The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English, 4(1), 9. (https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=tor)

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