comparative essay dulce et decorum est and this is the dark time my love

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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.

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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

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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

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“Dulce et Decorum Est” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

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“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

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‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilford Owen

Wilfred Owen, the poet, tells of his first-hand experience in war. He tells the tale of tired and wounded soldiers walking through dirt and sludge. Suddenly, there is a warning about gas, which the soldiers hurriedly and awkwardly heed by donning their helmets. Unfortunately, one soldier is too late in donning the helmet and his companions watch him ‘drowning’ in the gas. The unfortunate soldier was thrown in the back of a wagon, where it is implied that he was left to die. The persona points out that if you (the reader/ listener) could have witnessed these events, then you would not tell children the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro-Patria Mori (It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country).

LITERARY DEVICES

1. SIMILE Stanza 1, line 1: This simile introduces the exhaustion of the soldiers.

Stanza 1, line 2: This emphasises not only the tiredness of the soldiers but the fact that they might be sick as well.

Stanza 2, line 19: This device gives a visual image of how the soldier physically reacted to the gas. Floundering implies flopping about, therefore, the soldier was flopping about violently. We know it was violent because fire and lime illicit excruciating pain.

Stanza 4, line 39: This device gives a visual image of the expression on the soldier’s face. This is a particularly grotesque image that highlights the soldier in the throes of death.

Stanza 4, line 39: Cancer is a horrible disease that takes many lives on a daily basis. Therefore, to compare this dying soldier’s face to this disease is to emphasize the agony that the soldier was going through, which was reflected on his face.

Stanza 4, lines 39-40: This is another graphic comparison that compares the soldier’s face to incurable sores. ‘Sores’ is a disgusting visual image of degradation which, in turn, highlights the soldier in the throes of death.

ALLITERATION Stanza 1, line 7: This device points to the level of fatigue that the soldiers were undergoing.

Stanza 1, lines 7-9: This highlights not only the fatigue that the soldiers were feeling but the fact that they were injured as well.

Stanza 4, lines 29-30: This device highlights a visually graphic death mask. The soldier is in the throes of impending death.

IMPORTANT WORDS/ PHRASES 3. ‘Bent double’ The soldiers are bent over with fatigue. It is very significant that the poet/ persona initiates the poem by highlighting the exhaustion of the soldiers. He is trying to emphasize the harsh realities of war.

4. ‘haunting flares’ Flares are typically used to signal distress. The flare is fired from a flare gun, in the air, where rescue crafts, at sea or in the air, can have a general idea of the location of the soldiers who are in distress. Therefore, to describe the flares as haunting implies that the soldiers are severely distressed by their situation.

5.’ deaf even to the hoots of tired outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.’ Five-nines are German 5.9 artillery shells. This means that bullets were firing around them while they were walking. The extent of the soldiers’ tiredness is also emphasized at this point because the soldiers do not hear the shells going off around them.

6. ‘An ecstasy of fumbling’ The word ecstasy, which is used to describe fumbling, implies the level of panic that this one word (gas) elicits. The soldiers’ were so tired that they could not even hear the five nines, but this one word immediately woke them up.

7. ‘Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.’ This describes exactly what the outside world looks like through the lens of a gas mask. The effect of the gas is seen in the mention of the word ‘drown’. It implies that the unfortunate soldier could not breathe.

8. ‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.’ This is the very graphic result of breathing in the gas. It is a very violent reaction, as seen in the word ‘plunge’. The dying soldier did not simply reach for the persona/poet, but he did so in a desperate manner, while all the time being unable to breathe.

9. ‘wagon that we flung him in’  The statement implies that the soldier was left for dead in a wagon. No regard was shown to him, through the use of the word ‘flung’. This implies that war is heartless and tragic.

10 .’Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’  This statement literally means it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country. The persona/ poet clearly does NOT believe this to be the case. 

MOOD/ ATMOSPHERE The mood of the poem is reflective. The persona/ poet is thinking about his experiences in WWI. TONE The general tone of the poem is both sarcastic and ironic. The persona/ poet tries to present a visual of the realities of war while using haunting words that contradict that reality. It is, in fact, NOT sweet and honourable to die for one’s country. THEMATIC CATEGORIZATION War, death, survival,  patriotism

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Dulce et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen is a poignant anti-war poem that exposes the harsh reality of World War I.

Wilfred Owen

Nationality: English

He has been immortalized in several books and movies.

Key Poem Information

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Central Message: The war, in truth, is always gruesome and horrifying and should not be celebrated

Themes: Death , War

Speaker: A Soldier

Emotions Evoked: Anger , Pain , Sadness , Terror

Poetic Form: Sonnet

Time Period: 20th Century

'Dulce et Decorum Est' by Wilfred Owen, challenging romantic notions of war, is a robust anti-war poem that makes the reader face the petrifying harrowing truths of war with graphic imagery and blood-curdling nuances.

Poem Analyzed by Elise Dalli

B.A. Honors Degree in English and Communications

The year was 1917, just before the Third Battle of Ypres. Germany, in their bid to crush the British army, introduced yet another vicious and potentially lethal weapon of attack: mustard gas, differentiated from the other shells by their distinctive yellow markings. Although not the effective killing machine of chlorine gas (first used in 1915) and phosgene (invented by French chemists), mustard gas has stayed within the public consciousness as the most horrific weapon of the First World War. Once deployed, mustard gas lingers for several days, and anyone who comes in contact with mustard gas develops blisters and acute vomiting. It caused internal and external bleeding, and the lethally injured took as long as five weeks to die.

Shell shock, which can be defined as a type of post-traumatic stress disorder, was a term invented during the First World War as the soldiers suffered an immense impact on their psyche, witnessing the atrocities of war and the deaths of thousands.   Wilfred Owen served in the British Army during the First World War and initially believed in the glorified ideals of the war; however, as he witnessed the calamities of the war, he realized the bitter truth, going into a psychological shock.     He suffered injuries after he was caught in a blast and was unconscious for several days. Afterwards, he was admitted into Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment of shell shock. He wrote this poem bearing the physical and emotional trauma of soldiers while staying at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in October 1917.

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Explore Dulce et Decorum Est

• 2 Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
• 3 Historical Background

There was no draft in the First World War for British soldiers; it was an entirely voluntary occupation, but the British needed soldiers to fight in the war. Therefore, through a well-tuned propaganda machine of posters and poems, the British war supporters pushed young and easily influenced youths into signing up to fight for the glory of England.

Several poets, among them Rupert Brook, who wrote the poem ‘ The Soldier ‘  (there is a corner of a foreign field/ that is forever England), used to write poetry to encourage the youth to sign up for the army, often without having any experience themselves! It was a practice that Wilfred Owen personally despised, and in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est ,’ he calls out these false poets and journalists who glorify war.

The poem takes place during a slow trudge to an unknown place, which is interrupted by a gas attack. The soldiers hurry to put on their masks; only one of their numbers is too slow and gets consumed by the gas. The final stanza interlocks a personal address to war journalist Jessie Pope with horrifying imagery of what happened to those who ingested an excessive amount of mustard gas.

The Poem Analysis Take

Expert Insights by Jyoti Chopra

B.A. (Honors) and M.A. in English Literature

Painting a nuanced picture of the horrors of the Great War or the nightmarish calamity and dehumanization of soldiers, the poem critiques the glorification of war and hero-worship of soldiers, testing the misleading notions of patriotism that are relevant even today. The poem unflinchingly calls the false idealization 'it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country' a lie stressing the truth that war is always gruesome and soldiers are the worst sufferers of the calamity. It looks critically at the society and larger politics that push young soldiers into dehumanizing cruel deaths under the guise of hero-worship.  

Analysis, Stanza by Stanza

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

British soldiers would trudge from trench to trench, seeping further into France in pursuit of German soldiers. It was often a miserable, wet walk, and it is on one of these voyages that the poem opens. Immediately, it minimizes the war to a few paltry, exhausted soldiers, although it rages in the background (’till on the haunting flares we turned our backs / and towards our distant rest began to trudge’). Owen uses heavy words to describe their movement – words like ‘trudge’, and ‘limped’; the first stanza of the poem is a demonstration of pure exhaustion and mind-numbing misery.

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.

The second stanza changes the pace rapidly. It opens with an exclamation – ‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’ – and suddenly, the soldiers are in ‘an ecstasy of fumbling’, groping for their helmets to prevent the gas from taking them over. Again, Owen uses language economically here: he uses words that express speed, hurry, and almost frantic demand for their helmets. However, one soldier does not manage to fit his helmet on in time. Owen sees him ‘flound’ring like a man in fire or lime’ through the thick-glassed pane of his gas mask.

Stanza Three

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

For a brief two lines, Owen pulls back from the events happening throughout the poems to revisit his own psyche. He writes, ‘In all my dreams,/ before my helpless sight’, showing how these images live on with the soldiers, how these men are tortured by the events of war even after they have been removed from war. There is no evading or escaping war.

Stanza Four

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 .

In the last paragraph, Owen condenses the poem to an almost claustrophobic pace: ‘if in some smothering dreams, you too could pace’, and he goes into a very graphic, horrific description of the suffering that victims of mustard gas endured: ‘froth-corrupted lungs,” incurable sores,’ ‘the white eyes writhing in his face’. Although the pace of the poem has slowed to a crawl, there is much happening in the description of the torment of the mustard gas victim, allowing for a contrast between the stillness of the background and the animation of the mustard gas victim. This contrast highlights the description, making it far more grotesque .

Owen finishes the poem with a personal address to Jessie Pope: ‘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.’ Jessie Pope was a journalist who published, among others, books such as Jessie Pope’s War Poems and Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times. The Latin phrase is from Horace and means, ‘it is sweet and right to die for your country’.

The earliest dated record of this poem is 8. October 1917. It was written in the ballad form of poetry – a very flowing, romantic poetical style , and by using it outside of convention, Owen accentuates the disturbing cadence of the narrative. It is a visceral poem, relying very strongly on the senses, and while it starts out embedded in the horror and in the narrative, by the final stanza, it has pulled back to give a fuller view of the events, thus fully showing the horror of the mustard gas attack.

Historical Background

While at Craiglockhart, Owen became the editor of the hospital magazine The Hydra. Through it, he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon (read Sassoon’s poetry here ), who later became his editor and one of the most important impacts on his life and work. Owen wrote a number of his poems in Craiglockhart with Sassoon’s advice.

After his death in 1918, aged 25, Sassoon would compile Owen’s poems and publish them in a compilation in 1920.

Poetry + Review Corner

20th century, world war one (wwi).

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It was a volunteer army until 1916, when conscription was introduced.

Interesting. I had no idea conscription was so recent. Great subject knowledge. Thank you.

Pretty gruesome but it was telling the truth.

Oh definitely – cold reality was the hallmark of his later poetry.

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Dalli, Elise. "Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/wilfred-owen/dulce-et-decorum-est/ . Accessed 7 September 2024.

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