Chapter
E)
What makes English poetic?
Annotated extract
2 spondees-
Dulce et decorum est, Wilfred Owen, 1918
tough sounds
Setting -coming
back from trench
5
warfare
Figurative
language
Onomatopoeia
I
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.
10
2 spondees,
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! -An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
an iamb and a
trochee- sounds
Lot of consonance
with 'I' sound
20
Gruesome imagery
25
Direct narration
ababdcdc- longer
sonnet
Ironic form -sonnet
used for pro-war
poetry
Imagery- sound
of shells dropping
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ... --------------~~ Simile
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
SynedocheIn all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
panes = gas masks
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
urgent
Alliteration
Iambic pentameter,
3 octaves of
~
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him ,
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 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.
1st person point
of view, peripheral
narration
Direct narration Owen speaking to
his country
Change in footing
(volta)- iambic
pentameter is
cleaner from this
point on
Irony- 'how sweet and fitting it is to
die for one's country', same as title,
criticises the war
Juxtaposition -gruesome
imagery then lofty
abstract ideals
Individual oral commentary transcription (HL)
I've been presented with Dulce et decorum e6t, a poem by Wilfred
Owen. The poem
Was written in 1918, towards the end of the First World War, from the battlefield. We
can assume the poet is the narrator, because it is written from Owen's perspective.
He was a captain in the British Army, fighting in Belgium against the Germans, and
111ost likely witnessed the
event that he recounts in this narrative poem.
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re: critical study
It tells the story of a group of dejected soldiers retreating from the front lines.
They are attacked by gas: a kind of invisible enemy. One soldier cannot get his gas
mask on in time and dies a gruesome death, right there before Owen's eyes. The
title and the last line of the poem, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, means
'How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country.' It was used to recruit men
to go to war. The death of this soldier, however, is anything but sweet and fitting.
Therefore we can say that Owen is criticising pro-war propaganda by using irony. He
wants to show the world how people really die on the front lines.
In this individual oral commentary I'm going to talk about how Owen criticises the
war in his poem through irony. And I'm going to focus on the structure, the sound of
the poem and some other poetic devices, such as imagery and figurative language.
All of these express the writer's message and purpose: to criticise war propaganda.
To start off, we have to look at the kinds of sounds this poem makes. The poem
opens with the line Bent double, like old beggars under sacks. This is not the most
pleasant line of poetry. The 'b' sound, which is not the smoothest sound in English,
is repeated three times in the first line. The 'I' sound too. Owen is using alliteration
and consonance here, which is usually pleasant to the ears, if used with softer
sounds. Here it sounds harsh and rough. We see alliteration throughout the poem.
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face is another example of alliteration,
which sounds really gross. Not only the image that it creates, but I mean the effect
of the 'w' and 'eye' sounds when put so closelY. t~ether.
':~-
On a sound level there is something else that Owen does very well: he uses a lot
of onomatopoeia. Words like sludge, gargling and guttering are just a few of the
examples of words that sound like the actions they represent. They are also really
grotesque sounds. They add to the imagery of the poem, which I'll talk about later.
As far as syllables and metric feet are concerned, the poem is also full of harsh
sounds. There are lots of spondees, like Bent double and Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!
There are also some trochees, like fumbling, stumbling and drowning. These sounds
are not very aesthetically pleasing. There're not as aesthetically pleasing as iambic
pentameter, which we also find in this poem. You see mostly iambic pentameter
in the last stanza, after Owen has finished describing the attack. I think Owen
uses spondees and irregular feet, in contrast to iambic pentameter, to show the
reader- no, to let the reader hear- what war sounds like.
The form of this poem is very interesting. The poem is a sonnet of 28 lines, or
actually it's like two sonnets of 14 lines. Sonnets are usually 14 lines long, but in this
one there are no heroic couplets. Maybe because there is nothing heroic about dying
in war. I think this is what Owen is trying to say. Anyways this goes to illustrate the
point I want to make here which is this: on the surface Owen uses a classical, formal,
English structure: the sonnet. This was used by a lot of pro-war poets as well. Under
the surface of the poem, however, we see a lot of distortion. The iambic pentameter
doesn't feel right. There are no heroic couplets. Some lines have 11 syllables. All in all,
it's not perfect. This is exactly what Owen is trying to say through the form of the
poem: war is not perfect. All of those war poets who wrote perfect sonnets to get
you to come to war are lying. I think this is what he is trying to say.
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Chapter
Q
What makes English
poetic~
Now I'm going to talk about imagery. Just like the structure and sound of the
poem, the imagery also shows us that war is ugly. Like I said earlier, the poem is
full of sounds. You can hear the bombshells dropping in line 7, where it says hoots.
You can hear how their boots go through the mud in lines 2 and 4 with sludge and
trudge. And finally you can hear someone shout Gas! Gas! These sounds make it
come to life. It's almost as if you're there.
Not only are there lots of sounds in this poem, there are also lots and lots of
things to see. Actually Owen packs it so full of images that you almost see two
things in every phrase. For example they cursed through sludge, and someone
was yelling out and stumbling. This one is one of my favourites: He plunges at me,
guttering, choking, drowning. There's a lot to see and hear in the poem. And it's
all very gruesome and grotesque. Actually, it makes me understand why soldiers
suffered from shell shock or post-traumatic war syndrome. In fact Owen also
suffers from this at night, in his dreams, he says it right here, In all my dreams,
before my helpless sight.
Getting back to what I said in the introduction, you see here that Owen is a
character in this story. He talks about we in line 2. And in line 14 he says, I saw him
drowning. He turns to the reader and speaks to him directly, as well. So it's direct
narration. In lines 17, 21 and 25 he talks to you. Basically in this last stanza he's
saying, Look, if you had to walk behind this cart that we threw this dead soldier
into and you had to watch him die, you would not say it's so great to die for your
country. This is the narrative voice of the poem.
Finally, there are a few more devices I want to talk about. I want to talk about
figurative language. Owen uses a lot of metaphors in the poem to illustrate his
point. The men were drunk with fatigue, and marched asleep. Those metaphors
compare an implied tiredness with drunkenness and sleep. Like I said earlier, he also
sees the man drowning in line 14. The choking sound of dying from gas is caused by
the lungs filling up with fluid. It must have sounded like someone drowning. The gas
also makes the man fumble around like he is on fire. This is a simile, which paints a
picture of what it must have been like. So he uses metaphors and similes to tell us
how horrific it was there.
He also uses synecdoche to describe what's literally going on. We know these
soldiers are retreating from the front lines, because he talks about their backs
turned to the flares. This is very sad because retreating is not the most patriotic
thing. It's not something you think of when you hear Dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori. There's more synecdoche in line 13 with the misty pane and the thick
green light. We know that Owen has his gas mask on and he's watching the man die
from the gas, because the pane and green indicate this.
So, to conclude: this poem is about the horrors of war. And it criticises all
of those who glorify war. It does this by contrasting horrific imagery and ugly
sounds with the beautiful phrase in Latin Dulce et decorum est pro patria morl.
There's a big juxtaposition between these two, which is very symbolic of the entire
poem. Owen conveys his criticism of an ugly war through this poem that is full of
paradoxes.
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