It is noble, (pleasant) to die for one country

"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred

Own
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.

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" 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.

 “Dulce et Decorum Est” Summary

o The speaker begins with a description of soldiers, bent under the weight of their
packs like beggars, their knees unsteady, coughing like poor and sick old
women, and struggling miserably through a muddy landscape. They turn away
from the light flares (a German tactic of briefly lighting up the area in order to spot
and kill British soldiers), and begin to march towards their distant camp. The men
are so tired that they seem to be sleeping as they walk. Many have lost their
combat boots, yet continue on despite their bare and bleeding feet. The soldiers
are so worn out they are essentially disabled; they don't see anything at all. They
are tired to the point of feeling drunk, and don't even notice the sound of the
dangerous poison gas-shells dropping just behind them.

Somebody cries out an urgent warning about the poison gas, and the soldiers
fumble with their gas masks, getting them on just in time. One man, however, is
left yelling and struggling, unable to get his mask on. The speaker describes this
man as looking like someone caught in fire or lime (an ancient chemical weapon
used to effectively blind opponents). The speaker then compares the scene—
through the panes of his gas-mask and with poison gas filling the air — to being
underwater, and imagines the soldier is drowning.
 The speaker jumps from the past moment of the gas attack to a present moment
sometime afterward, and describes a recurring dream that he can't escape, in
which the dying soldier races toward him in agony.

The speaker directly addresses the audience, suggesting that if readers could
experience their own such suffocating dreams (marching behind a wagon in
which the other men have placed the dying soldier, seeing the writhing of the
dying soldier's eyes in an otherwise slack and wrecked face, and hearing him
cough up blood from his ruined lungs at every bump in the path—a sight the
speaker compares to the horror of cancer and other diseases that ravage even
the innocent), they would not so eagerly tell children, hungry for a sense of
heroism, the old lie that "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

 “Dulce et Decorum Est” Themes

o

The Horror and Trauma of War

Wilfred Owen wrote “Dulce et Decorum Est” while he was fighting as a soldier during
World War I. The poem graphically and bitterly describes the horrors of that war in
particular, although it also implicitly speaks of the horror of all wars. While it is easy to
comment on the “horror of war” in the abstract, the poem’s depiction of these horrors is
devastating in its specificity, and also in the way that Owen makes clear that such horror
permeates all aspects of war. The banal daily life of a soldier is excruciating, the brutal
reality of death is unimaginable agony, and even surviving a war after watching others
die invites a future of endless trauma. The way Owen uses language to put readers
inside the experiences of a soldier helps them begin to understand the horrific
experience of all of these awful aspects of war.

In the first stanza of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” the speaker thrusts the reader into the
mundane drudgery and suffering of the wartime experience, as the speaker’s regiment
walks from the front lines back to an undescribed place of “distant rest.” This is not a
portrait of men driven by purpose or thrilled by battle. Instead, they are miserable:
“coughing like hags,” cursing as they “trudge” through “sludge” with bloody feet. They
march “asleep,” suggesting that these soldiers are like a kind of living dead. The terror
and brutality of war have deadened them.

While the speaker is clear that the life of a soldier is painful and demoralizing, he
demonstrates in the second stanza—which moves from describing the communal “we”
of a regiment to a specific dying man—that death in war is also terrible: barbarous,
agonizing, and meaningless. In the first two lines of the second stanza, the speaker
captures the terror and dumb confusion of facing a gas attack (a feature of Word War I
combat, which had never been used to such a terrible extent before that war), with the
movement from the first cry of “Gas!” to the urgent amplification of that cry (“GAS!”),
which is then followed by all the men “fumbling” with “clumsy helmets.” The speaker
then describes a particular man unable to get his helmet on time, “stumbling” and
“flound’ring” like a “man in fire” while the speaker can only watch helplessly from within
his own mask. This other soldier's death is mired in confusion and pain. There isn’t even
an enemy to face; it is a physically agonizing death offering no ideal or purpose to hold
onto.

The poem’s very short third stanza suddenly plunges into the speaker’s own mind. In
doing so, the poem reveals another aspect of the horror of war: that even surviving war
offers ceaseless future torment. The surviving speaker describes himself as seeing in
“all my dreams” this man dying in agony. The speaker can’t escape this vision, which
means he can't ever achieve the "rest" that was the sole positive thing mentioned in the
first stanza. The speaker's sleep is permanently haunted by the trauma of the death he
has witnessed.

Since the third stanza is written in the present tense, it indicates that these
dreams never fade. The speaker, who has survived—perhaps for a moment, perhaps
the entire war—is permanently scarred by this trauma for however long his life will last.
 The poem’s portrayal of the horror of war, then, is complete and total. It
reveals all aspects of war—living through it, dying in it, and surviving it—as being brutal,
agonizing, and without meaning.

 Lines 1-4

Owen begins the poem with a description of marching soldiers. His focus is on the
grimness and misery of the situation, which seems to have rapidly aged the men and
zapped them of life. In the first line, the speaker compares the soldiers to "old beggars"
bent under their burdens. In line 2, he compares their coughing to that of "hags," a
derogatory term for old women, and emphasizes their physical weariness as they
struggle through mud. In lines 3 and 4 he clarifies direction, showing the reader that the
soldiers are marching away from enemy territory (marked by the "flares") and towards
the place where they will be able to rest.

The first four lines thus set up a scene, helping the reader understand the soldiers'
fatigue, their frustration (expressed by cursing), and the constant danger that still
surrounds them (represented by the flares). Owen uses consonance to lend a
harshness to the sounds of the poem. In the first line, the letter "b" appears in three
stressed words ("bent," "double," and "beggars"). This gives way to hard "c" and "k"
sounds, with "sacks," "coughing," "cursed," and "backs." Although the "k" sounds of
"knock-kneed" are silent, they contribute visually to the hard consonants of this section.
The sibilance of "distant rest," meanwhile, makes it stand out from the rest of the
landscape, sounding like a whisper, perhaps not entirely real.

These lines are basically in iambic pentameter, a meter that consists of five iambs per
line. This sets up the expectation that the rest of the poem will follow this pattern. Owen
does play with stress a little, though. He crams more stressed syllables into the first two
lines than belong in iambic pentameter.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags

This decision sets the rhythm of the poem rocking. It's over-stressed, unstable,
reflecting the instability and roughness of the scene the speaker is describing.

 “Dulce et Decorum Est” Symbols

o

The Dying Soldier

Although the dying soldier in "Dulce et Decorum Est" is an individual character

within the narrative, he also stands in for a generation of young men exposed to
the brutality of WWI. The speaker's argument rests on the implicit truth that the
dying soldier's experience isn't isolated, and that to the contrary there were
many, many deaths like this one. That the soldier is associated with the word
"innocent" in line 24 emphasizes the injustice and horror of his death and that of
others like him.

As an innocent, the poem also connects the soldier to the "children" of line 26,
who are also, by virtue of being children, "innocent." The dying soldier, and the
generation he represents, cannot be saved. Their lives have already been
forfeited to war. But the poem makes clear that the next generation—the children
—are doomed to repeat the pattern, unless the "old Lie" is finally seen as being
the lie it is.

 “Dulce et Decorum Est” Poetic Devices & Figurative

Language
o Allusion
 In the title and the final two lines of this "Dulce et Decorum Est," Owen alludes to
an ode by the Roman poet Horace. Horace's ode encouraged young men to find
fulfillment and discipline in military service. The poem criticizes cowardice and
weakness, pointing out that everyone dies in the end, whether gloriously or not.
Given this, Horace argues that it is best to strive for courage and a steely
temperament. The quotation—which in English reads "It is sweet and fitting to die
for one's country"—might have been familiar to Owen's original readers, if they
were Englishmen with a similar education background. Horace's Odes were a
common text in Latin lessons of the era before World War 1, and Horace's ideas
of what is and isn't virtuous and honorable were commonly accepted as being
correct. In fact, this exact quotation was carved into the wall of a prestigious
military academy in England in 1913. The kind of "wisdom" that Horace
represents is ingrained, respected, even taken for granted.

Often, poets include allusions as a way to connect a poem to a traditional event,

myth, or idea—to place their own poem into that tradition. But Owen includes the
allusion to Horace for exactly the opposite reason. Owen's poem—which is full of
brutal, awful death that is marked by only confusion and agony, and to which
glory and courage could not even begin to apply—seeks to expose the entire
traditional belief in the glory and honor of war as being a lie. That he includes the
original lines from Horace, and not a paraphrase or English translation, makes
clear that it is the entire tradition, from Roman antiquity to the time of World War
I, that he sees as fraudulent and destructive. Put another way: Owen seeks to
undermine and refute what he is alluding to.

SUMMARY

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 emphasizes
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 soldiers 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, that is used to describe the 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 wakes 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 WW1.

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 the 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

Stanza By Stanza Analysis of Dulce et

Decorum Est
First Stanza

The first line takes the reader straight into the ranks of the soldiers, an unusual opening,
only we're told they resemble "old beggars" and "hags" (note the similes) by the
speaker, who is actually in amongst this sick and motley crew.

The initial rhythm is slightly broken iambic pentameter until line five when commas and
semi-colons and other punctuation reflect the disjointed efforts of the men to keep pace.

Also note the term "blood-shod" which suggests a parallel with horses, and the fact that
many are lame, drunk, blind and deaf. The trauma of war has intoxicated the soldiers.
Second Stanza

Suddenly the call goes up: "Gas!" We delve deeper into the scene as chemical warfare
raises its ugly head and one man gets caught and left behind. He's too slow to don his
gas mask and helmet, which would have saved his life by filtering out the toxins.

"An ecstasy of fumbling," the poet writes. The ecstasy is used here in the sense of a
trance-like frenzy as the men hurriedly put on their helmets. It has nothing to do with
happiness.

Third Stanza

Only two lines long, this stanza brings home the personal effect of the scene on the
speaker. The image sears through and scars despite the dream-like atmosphere
created by the green gas and the floundering soldier.

Owen chose the word "guttering" to describe the tears streaming down the face of the
unfortunate man, a symptom of inhaling toxic gas.

Fourth Stanza

The speaker widens the issue by confronting the reader (and especially the people at
home, far away from the war), suggesting that if they too could experience what he had
witnessed, they would not be so quick to praise those who die in action.

They would be lying to future generations if they thought that death on the battlefield
was sweet. Owen does not hold back. His vivid imagery is quite shocking, his message
direct and his conclusion sincere.

The last four lines are thought to have been addressed to a Jessie Pope, a children's
writer and journalist at the time, whose published book Jessie Pope's War
Poems included a poem titled The Call, an encouragement for young men to enlist and
fight in the war.

What Is the Main Theme of "Dulce et

Decorum Est?"
"Dulce et Decorum Est" does not have one theme, but many. Still, each of the themes
centre around war and the antiquated notions associated with it. The main themes of
this poem are listed below:

War

One of the main themes of this poem is war. It deals with a soldier's experience in World
War I, and contrasts the realities of war with the glorified notion of what serving in a war
is like.

Propaganda

This poem takes aim at the idea of war presented by war-supporting propaganda.
During World War I, propaganda came in the form of books, poems, posters, movies,
radio and more, and presented an idea of war full of glory and pride rather than of death
and destruction.

Politics

Politics are often the cause war, yet it is the men who have nothing to do with politics
who are recruited to fight it. This poem underlines the wrongness of this dynamic.

Hero Worship

Everyone wants to be the hero. In reality, it is the man who keeps his head down is he
who survives the longest.

Patriotism

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," means it is sweet and proper to die for one's
country. This idea of patriotism fueled the hopes and dreams of many young soldiers
who entered World War I. Once they realised the horrors that awaited them, however,
this ideal patriotism was rightly viewed as ridiculous.
What Is the Structure of "Dulce et
Decorum Est?"
"Dulce et Decorum Est" might have started out as a double sonnet (there are 28 lines in
total) and many lines are in iambic pentameter, with end rhymes. Owen must have
decided against it as he worked on the draft, ending up with four unequal stanzas.

How Is Language and Diction Used in

"Dulce et Decorum Est?"
"Dulce et Decorum Est" surprises the reader from the start. The opening lines contain
words such as bent, beggars, sacks, hags, cursed, haunting, trudge. This is the
language of poverty and deprivation, hardly suitable for the glory of the battlefield where
heroes are said to be found.

Yet this is precisely what the poet intended. Figurative language fights with literal
language. This is no ordinary march. Most seem asleep, from exhaustion no doubt,
suggesting that a dream world isn't too far distant–a dream world very unlike the resting
place they're headed for.

The second stanza's first line brings the reader directly in touch with the unfolding
drama and, although these are soldiers, men (as well as old beggars and hags), the
simple word "boys" seems to put everything into perspective.

What Are the Poetic Devices Used in

"Dulce et Decorum Est?"
Wilfred Owen makes use of numerous poetic devices in this poem. Aside from the the
structure, which is discussed above, Owen strategically uses assonance, alliteration,
and iambic pentameter to transmit the dirty and dark feelings felt on the battlefield.

Assonance

It is important to note the poet's use of internal, line-by-line assonance. For example:
double / under / cursed / sludge / haunting /turned / trudge.

And again with:

drunk / fumbling / clumsy / stumbling / under / plunges / guttering /

flung / corrupted / lungs / cud / dulce

Throughout the poem this is almost like the background rumbling of distant explosions.

Alliteration

Alliteration also occurs in lines five, eleven and nineteen:

Line 5: Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

Line 11: But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

Line 19: And watch the white eyes writhing in his face

What Is the Tone and Mood of "Dulce

et Decorum Est?"
From the start of this poem you are immersed in the atmosphere of war. These are the
trenches of WWI, full of mud and death. Once optimistic, healthy soldiers have now
been reduced to a miserable, exhausted gang who have little left to give.

It's a shocking environment into which the reader is taken–one that is oppressive,
dangerous and without any real hope.

The poet wants the reader to know that warfare is anything but glorious, so he paints a
gloomy, realistic, human picture of life at the frontline. He leaves us no doubt about his
feelings.
 The tone and mood is also set by language such as "misty panes and thick green light."
From the start we feel that the world has been turned upside down, and that all things
having to do with happiness and vitality have been cast away. This is not a lively green,
but a thick green. The window is not clear, but misty. This is the land of the walking
dead, of the sickly–a world cold, muddy and metallic.

By the end of the poem, it appears the reader has been moved away from the
"haunting" battlefield, and the setting becomes internal. Here, the mood is less
gruesome, but no less pitiful. In one sense, to see the way these scenes of death and
violence have affected the poet's mind is just as disturbing as the scenes themselves.

How Is Imagery Used in "Dulce et

Decorum Est?"
This poem is packed full of vivid images forged in the heat of battle, skillfully drawn by
the young, keenly observant poet.

The opening scene is one of a group of soldiers making their weary way from the
frontline "towards our distant rest" as bombs drop and lethal gas is released. Details are
intimate and immediate, taking the reader right into the thick of trench war.

These men appear old, but that is only an illusion. War has twisted reality which
gradually turns surreal as the poem progresses. The speaker evokes a dream-like
scenario, the green of the enveloping gas turning his mind to another element, that of
water, and the cruel sea in which a man is drowning.

The descriptions become more intense as the drowning man is disposed of on a cart.
All the speaker can do is compare the suffering to a disease with no known cure. The
final image - sores on a tongue - hints at what the dying soldier himself might have said
about the war and the idea of a glorious death.

What Are the Symbols Used in "Dulce

et Decorum Est?"
While Owen utilizes figurative language, similes, and assonance to combat the illusion
that war is glorious, he also uses symbols to underline his message. There are three
overarching symbols that strengthen the impact of "Dulce et Decorum Est."
Disfiguration

Owen focuses on the way war disfigures and warps all things that come into contact
with it. Primarily, he focuses on the human body and the way it is slowly damaged and
changed before ultimately being destroyed. We see the symbol of disfiguration in the
first stanza, when the poet reports on the state of his fellow men:

Lines 1–3

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

Lines 5–7

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

By looking closely at the language used in the above lines, the symbol of disfiguration
becomes clear. The men are no longer the men the used to be. They are shadows of
their former selves: dead men walking.

Allusion

As we can see by the title and last line of this poem, one of the main symbols is allusion
(in this instance, an allusion to Horace's Latin phrase). The allusion points to the idea
that fighting and dying for your country is glorious. After making this allusion, the poet
devotes all of his efforts to proving it wrong.

The devil is also alluded to in line 20, indicating the badness of the battlefield.

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

Nightmares
Another symbol that pervades this poem is the idea of the nightmare. Owen presents
the scenes of war as a nightmare with their greenish color and mistiness. Also, the
terrifying imagery adds to the feeling of a bad dream.

This symbol indicates that the horrors of war are almost too hard to comprehend. This
must be a nightmare, mustn't it? The reality is that it is not a nightmare: These are real
atrocities that happened to real people. The fact that the poet presents the poem as a
sort of nightmare makes it all the more terrible.