The Ugliness of War in Wilfred Owens Dulce et Decorum...

The Ugliness of War in Wilfred Owens Dulce et Decorum est Wilfred Owens Dulce et Decorum est is seen as a strong expression of the ugliness of war, and an attack on the idea of war being glorious (Kerr 48). It transmits an irritating clip, with full animation and in vivid colors, of embittered and battered soldiers marching to their death. It also, cogently presents a nightmarish vision of hell uploading all its demons into the root directory of an impoverished soldier who saw one of his comrades gassed to death. The images that Owen confected with the skill of a professional craftsman remain grafted in the readers memory long after the poem is read, echoing its sober message times and times again. The soldiers voice†¦show more content†¦In spite of his attempt at, what might seem to some critics, some colloquialism, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, blood-shod, the poem is marked by its high diction and entrancing expression that smell of the styles of previous generations of traditional poets. In short, the poem with its imitation of conventional poetic form, excellence of diction, elevated language, and persuasion effect is a paradigm of what Longinus terms the sublime in expression. A thorough examination of the poem reveals the Longinus sublimity of articulation through the use of adjuration (l. 25), asyndeton (l. 2, 3), accumulation of figures of speech (l. 1-6), hyperbaton (l. 3, 13), periphrasis (l. 4) and familiar language in its right place (l.1, 2, 9, 20). The manipulation of these figures of speech wrapped in traditional rhymes and cadences cannot possibly represent the actual idiom of a wretched, battered and embittered soldier, during an intensely traumatic moment of his life. This failure of representation confirms my suspicion that the poet at the moment of composing the text has never felt the intensity of the experience described by the traumatized soldier. It is true that Owen joined the war; and it is true that he tragically died in the front few days before the end of the war, yet he seems to have made peace with war. His published letters from the front to his family do not reflect, even from a distance, the soldiers sentiment and emotion in Dulce et Decorum est. OnShow MoreRelatedDulce Et Decorum Est2255 Words   |  10 Pages «Dulce et decorum est », Wilfred Owen (1917, 1920)  «Dulce et decorum est » is a poem written by British poet Wilfred Owen, during World War one, in 1917. The translation of the Latin title is:  «It is sweet and proper ». The completed sentence is as follows:  «It is sweet and proper to die for ones country ». This forms, what the writer refers to as,  «The old Lie ». The poem holds a strong criticism towards the conventional view of war at that written time. I shall now comment briefly on that timesRead MoreDulce Et Decorum Est2249 Words   |  9 Pages «Dulce et decorum est », Wilfred Owen (1917, 1920)  «Dulce et decorum est » is a poem written by British poet Wilfred Owen, during World War one, in 1917. The translation of the Latin title is:  «It is sweet and proper ». The completed sentence is as follows:  «It is sweet and proper to die for ones country ». This forms, what the writer refers to as,  «The old Lie ». The poem holds a strong criticism towards the conventional view of war at that written time. I shall now comment briefly on that times