Dulce Et Decorum Est

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A Glimpse of
“Dulce et Decorum Est”

Through vivid imagery and compelling metaphors “Dulce et Decorum Est” gives the reader the exact feeling the author wanted. The poem is an anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen and makes great use of these devices. This poem is very effective because of its excellent manipulation of the mechanical and emotional parts of poetry. Owen's use of exact diction and vivid figurative language emphasizes his point, showing that war is terrible and devastating. Furthermore, the utilization of extremely graphic imagery adds even more to his argument. Through the effective use of all three of these tools, this poem conveys a strong meaning and persuasive argument.
To have a better understanding of the poem, it is important to understand some of Wilfred Owen’s history. Owen enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles on October 21st 1915. He was eventually drafted to France in 1917. The birth of Owen’s imagery style used in his more famous poems was during his stay at Craiglockhart War Hospital, where he met Siegfried Sassoon (another great war poet). Owen’s new style (the one that was used in “Dulce et Decorum Est”) embellished many poems between August 1917 and September 1918. On November 4, 1918, Wilfred Owed was killed by enemy machine gun fire as he tried to get his company across the Sambre Canal (Stallworthy).
The poem tells of a trip that Owen and his platoon of exhausted soldiers had while they were painfully making their way back to base after a harrowing time at the battle front when a gas shell was fired at them. As a result of this, a soldier in his platoon was fatally gassed. Owen has arranged the poem in three sections, each dealing with a different stage of this experience. He makes use of a simple, regular rhyme scheme, which makes the poem sound almost like a child's poem or nursery rhyme. This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content.
In stanza one, Owen describes ...