Wilfred Owen - Dulce Et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

• The old Lie Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori'

This means It is sweet and honourable to die for ones country, and its sweet and proper to die for the fatherland.

• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
• 'Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--'.

Wilfred Owen is a talented man who writes his poetry based on the war with experience and disgust. Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' and 'The Next War' explore the recurring themes of loss and horror. Loss of love, life and innocence. The horror of war, of fighting to live, and of the sound of death. However, Owen also explores the unity of the men that served, how the soldiers developed a bother hood from the brutal mess that is war. Wilfred Owen did not shy from challenging the glorification of war, he interrogates the idea of the traditional patriotism and nationalism. Owen has used intense and graphic imagery that has created poems that show the shocking realism of armed conflict, these also question and tare the idealistic views of glory in war.  

The opening lines contain language of poverty and deprivation, ' Bent double, like old beggars under sacks'. Wilfred Owen uses this form of language to describe a setting, giving he reader a visual.

However the language used in the start of the poem gets darker and horrific, to bring the reader in touch of what it was like to be a solider,  'Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--'.

'The old Lie Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori'

This means It is sweet and honourable to die for ones country, and its sweet and proper to die for the fatherland. Owen used this as the poems title ironically, to show the lies that the men were told going into the battlefield.