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Laura Christiane Bialik

English 1900A
31 Oct. 2012
Corruption and Ennoblement in Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum est
In Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum est, the speaker recounts his experience in the first
world war. The phrase Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori in the last two lines and, in part, the
title translates to 'it is sweet and right to die for one's country.' We see that the poem is titled ironically
as the speaker describes war as inglorious and corrupting, despite its historical ennoblement.
The speaker uses description to illustrate that war is inglorious. He begins by comparing the
soldiers to old beggars under sacks (1) and Knock-kneed, coughing...hags (2). In so doing, he not
only emasculates the soldiers by describing them as beggars and ugly, old women, but also by
portraying them as unhealthy and weak. He renders the soldiers as menial when he describes them
trudg[ing] (4) and march[ing] (5) through marshes, blood-shod (6) because they lost their boots.
When one of the soldiers dies, he is not honoured, but flung (18) in a wagon, which suggests that
inglorious deaths are common in war. Perhaps most telling is the word ecstasy (9) used to describe
the feeling of putting on a mask as gas bombs fall from above. Ecstasy is defined as rapturous delight
(dictionary.com) and is arguably the only positive word in the poem which is not explicitly ironic or
tragic. The speaker suggests with this word that his conditions are so melancholy that, in comparison,
putting on a gas mask is exhilarating.
In addition to description, specific diction is used to create an negative atmosphere. By using
unattractive words such as sacks (1) and sludge (2), the speaker creates a harsh mood. By using the
word hoots (7) when describing the falling of gas bombs, the speaker alludes to the old English belief
that an owl foreshadows death. For those who are familiar with the owl's symbolism, this word-choice
is daunting.
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The poetic structure adds to the unpleasantness by having an irregular stanza and line formation.
Lines twenty-two and twenty-eight are both shorter than every other line, which creates a sense of
detachment and eeriness. This is especially apparent in the sudden line break that comes after cud in
line twenty-two. Here, cud echoes through the reader's mind and leaves an unwanted taste in his/her
mouth in the split second before he/she continues to the next line. The poet creates a similar effect with
the word drowning in lines fourteen and sixteen, although the stanza break here is typical of
traditional french ballads. Because of the stanza breaks after both occurrences of the word drowning,
the accompanying meaning and imagery last a second longer.
Many aspects of the poem illustrate not only the degradation of the soldiers, but also their
corruption. Most noticeable is the mental and physical corruption which occurs. We can assume that the
majority of the soldiers in the poem were relatively physically and mentally sound before entering the
war. However, the speaker describes them all as lame (6), blind (6), deaf (7), and drunk with
fatigue (7), which suggests that war has corrupted the soldiers' minds and bodies. Although this
deterioration may be temporary, the smothering dreams (17), from which the speaker suffers, are
likely more long-lasting. Specifically, the speaker relates, in disturbing detail, the way a dead soldier
looks and sounds as he dies and is then carried in a wagon. Such vivid dreams are characteristic of
post-traumatic stress disorder, which can corrupt the mental stability of veterans for years after their
return from war.
The speaker also relates the spiritual corruption of the soldiers through references to formidable
figures from religion and folklore. The speaker's description of the dead soldier is perhaps the most
obvious of these allusions. The speaker refers to the dead soldier's lungs as froth corrupted (22) and
his face as a devil's sick of sin (20). In addition, the speaker describes the tongues of such soldiers as
innocent (23), which suggests that the men were not sick of sin before they became soldiers and
their lungs not froth-corrupted until filled with poisonous gas. The speaker also refers to the soldiers
as hags... curs[ing] through sludge (2). Both hags and cursing are associated with dark magic and
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damnation in English folklore.

The speaker suggests that war glorification is an old practice. In the last stanza, which is typically
reserved for moralization in french ballads, the speaker suggests that if the intended reader, you,
understood the atrocities of war, he/she would not ennoble it in front of children. Although you
could be a specific person, several clues suggest that the speaker also means to reach a larger audience
and expose the issue on a larger scale. By referring to Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori, as The
old Lie (27) the speaker suggests that the misconception that war is sweet and right has been present
throughout history, and not just by you. That the saying is in Latin, by itself, also suggests that it
either dates back to before Latin became a dead language, or the speaker merely uses an old language
to emphasize the antiquity of the ideology behind the saying. The use of the traditional french ballad
form adds to the antiquity of this ideal, as the french ballad is an older form of poetry. The owl, which
the speaker uses as a bad omen, was earlier considered a symbol of wisdom and justice by ancient
Greeks. That the ancient Greeks used what is now considered an omen of death as a figure of wisdom
and justice symbolizes the ancient belief that war brings glory and justice.
The entire poem serves to contradict the phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which the
poet sarcastically chose as a title. He contradicts the notion that war is sweet by describing the frothcorrupted lungs of a dead soldier as bitter (23). He suggests that dying for one's country is not right
by comparing soldiers to hags and devils guided by the guardian of the dead, the owl, to the
underworld. He attempts to reveal war for what it really is; not sweet or right, but inglorious and grim.

Word Count = 1111

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Works Cited
Ecstasy. Def. 1. dictionary.com. n.d. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ecstasy?s=t>
Owen, Wilfred. Dulce et Decorum est. English 1900A Course Pack. Ed. Wendy Faith. University of
Lethbridge, 2012.