Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Dulce et Decorum est Quotes - Coggle Diagram
Dulce et Decorum est Quotes
'And towards our distant rest began to trudge.'
The 'distant rest' could symbolise eternal death.
The verb 'trudge' could show the effortful moving and that the men are severely fatigued.
'Of gas-shells dropping softly behind'
The juxtaposition of the 'shells' that drop 'softly behind' can show how the men are numbed to the shells and their noises and that this has become the norm for them. It could also show that these men could now also be deaf from all the noise. They are desensitised.
The hearing loss however, could be one of the symptoms of shell shock that the men are experiencing.
'But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;'
This could show disablement and the reality of war. That these men were blind to the propaganda about the war being just a game or that they'll get a girlfriend or wife after serving in the army.
'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,'
The soldiers are asking for benevolence and they are unrecognisable and homeless in the trenches.
'Sacks' gives the notion that the boys are already the living dead but could also show the lack of equipment.
'Bent-double' show the rigid, erect, straight soldiers being broken by war and showing weakness.
The young are becoming old and are maturing too fast for their age as many boys signed up under the age limit of 19, the youngest boy to sign up 12 and fought in the Somme just after turning 13.
'Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,'
The aural imagery could show the shellshock these men are facing as many men went untreated for the condition.
The collective pronoun 'we' shows the camaraderie between the men but also Owen's responsibility and experience in the war.
War has emasculated the men and they feel very violent emotions, feeling betrayed by their country.
'Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,'
They are haunted by the horror and it's ghostly.
'Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,'
'Men marched asleep' could show an image of puppetry, that these men are continuously being controlled by the establishment. The men are shells of what they are and because they are 'asleep' which could symbolise death.
The full stop in the middle of the line creates discord.
'Many had lost their boots,' shows that these men have ill-fitting equipment and that they are susceptible to trench-foot. They are also forced to continue their duties, even when lacking the correct equipment.
'Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots'
The use of 'drunk' shows the men as weakened, in a state that shows the damages of war on the men and their physical and mental state.
'And flound'ring like a men in fire or lime. --'
There is an extended metaphor of drowning is continued throughout as the man drowns in the gas. It infantilises the men and evokes sympathy in the reader.
The 'fire or lime' could reference how this is hell on earth and the suffering from dying in a gas attack.
'As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.'
The man is drowning in his own blood from the gas and the 'green sea' could be the green of the gas that's surrounding them and killing this man.
'Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,'
In the gas mask, Owen can't see because of how 'dim' it is and the green could show the green of the gas.
'Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling'
This mimics natural and direct speech which transports the reader to the trenches and the front line to experience the horrors of the war for themselves. This breaks the rhythm of the poem.
'Ecstasy' can also show the heightened emotion and adrenaline of panic that is set in the boys as they are having an abstract experience.
'Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,'
The 'clumsy helmets' could symbolise the ill-fitting equipment that the boys have as it is all a standard uniform, making it all luck to be alive.
'But someone still was yelling out and stumbling'
The 'someone' shows that this person is unrecognisable and could reference the unmarked graves and unknown deaths of soldiers which humanises the soldiers.
In the panic and through the ill-fitting helmets there would be no way for Owen to tell who this person is.
'If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood'
'The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.'
(It is sweet and fitting to die for ones country).
It's a critique of society and propaganda.
The colon gives a pause to let the reader have time to think and the use of Latin reinforces the tradition engraned in society.
'My friend, you would not tell with such high zest'
The 'my friend' could be referencing Jessie Pope who wrote a propaganda poem 'who's for the game' and treated war like it was a game and an adventure, which it wasn't.
It is mocking and sarcastic as well as jingoistic and anti patriotism.
'In all my dreams before my helpless sight'
Owen is haunted by the horrors of war and seems to be suffering from survivors guilt because he was 'helpless' to save the man who died.
This could emphasise Owen's stay in Craiglockhart and his shell shock.
'If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace'
The use of 'smothering' shows the physical effects of war.
The second person pronoun 'you' is accusatory, engages the reader and is against propaganda.
'Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud'
War has crossed the line of acceptability.
'And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,'
The soldier has surrendered to death but died a very painful one.
'The white eyes' are a symbol of his eyes having rolled back after he died which reinforces pain and suffering.
'He plunges at me, guttering, chocking, drowning.'
The 'guttering, chocking, drowning' is like the soldier chocking on the gas.
This aural imagery bombards the senses and is like the soldier is asking for help, showing Owen's inner guilt and vulnerability, referencing his shellshock.
'To children ardent for some desperate glory,'
This could reference the amount of underage boys who enlisted into the war and were accepted.
'Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs'
There is a guttural sound from 'gargling' which emphasises the corrosive chemical warfare.
The 'froth-corrupted lungs' show what is being sacrificed which is physical and violent, shows the loss of youth and the corruption of soldiers by the establishment.
'His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,'
Owen negates everything and debases war, saying that it's even worse than because even the devil is sick of it.
The 'sick of sin' is sibilance.
'Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --'
Something pure and innocent like youth becoming corrupted by war.
'Behind the wagon that we flung him in,'
This shows the care Owen has for his boys and what has to be done to the deceased in war.