STEP 1: SUBJECT MATTER
 Setting is the Western Front during WW1
 Exhausted soldiers are attacked with gas shells
by the enemy.
STEP 3: TONE/MOOD
 Initially the poet is calm, highlighting the
exhaustion of the men in the first two stanzas.
“DULCE ET DECORUM EST” BY WILFRED OWEN
STEP 4:
TECHNIQUES
Imagery evokes
tiredness, Owen
uses strong similes
and metaphors to
create this effect.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, (A)
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, (B)
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs (A)
Constant
rhyme pattern
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. (B)
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots (C)
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; (D)
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots (C)
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines* that dropped behind. (D)
Repetition of
“ing” creates
both rhyme and
rhythm,
emphasizing the
soldier’s
suffering
throughout the
poem as in the
first verse
a/b/a/b etc
Assonance -half rhyme
based on the vowel sound
of “I”, helps make the
poem more dramatic and
powerful through extra
emphasis.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, (E)
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; (F)
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, (E)
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. (F)
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, (G)
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. (E)
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, (G)
Metaphor -gas attack
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. (E)
likened to sea with a
soldier drowning.
* “Five-Nines” – gas shells, used by the German army and containing mustard gas.
STEP 3: TONE
The tone changes to one of anger, as the
poet watches the gas victim suffer.
Word choice/personification: implies dreams
are more like nightmares.
Powerful
imagery
through the
use of similes
and hyperbole
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*.
STEP 2: PURPOSE
 Emphasizes horror of
the gas attack, by creating
irony through the use of
the Latin quote, as this
soldier’s death is neither
“sweet and fitting”.
STEP 5: SYNTHESIS
The last two lines of the poem are especially ironic
as war is neither “sweet or fitting” when as soldier
dies, as illustrated in the simile of “his hanging face
like a devil’s sick of sin”. By likening the gassed
soldier’s face as to that of a “devil” whose “sick of
sin”, Owen is using both hyperbole and a simile to
show his reader just how much the gassed soldier is
suffering.
* “Ducle et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori” (LATIN) = It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.