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Michaela Jacobs

Professor Kiewitz

Literature 2220.501

28 April 2019

Wilfred Owen: Revealing World War I Truths

At a time when war was highly misunderstood, Wilfred Owen stepped out as a voice of

truth in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”. It is a poem that he wrote about the front lines of

World War I. Owen’s audience was unware of these horrors, so Owen uses dramatic imagery,

specific words, symbolism, and structure to make his point all too. This work and others like it

showed war as a horrifying and bloody struggle that is too often disguised by tales of glory.

Owen exposes the fact in “Dulce et Decorum Est” that human nature too often glorifies a thing

that it does not fully understand or has a misconception of it leading it to pain and suffering.

World War I was an extremely deadly conflict. There are many causes for World War I.

Part of the cause was imperialism. The more developed countries felt the need for lands to sell

their goods. This caused rivalry among the different powers as Britain and France owned a lot of

the markets. Another straw was the Moroccan Crisis in which Germany supported the

Moroccans in their cry for independence. However, the action that is widely seen as the last

straw was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia (“World War I: A

Comprehensive Overview of the Great War” para. 5,8,10). With civilian casualties accounted

for, the casualty count ranges around 16 million people (“World War I: A Comprehensive

Overview of the Great War” para. 214). This was partly due to the new weapons such as gas,
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tanks, and airplanes that made it the most advanced war yet (“World War I: A Comprehensive

Overview of the Great War” para. 220). Some decided to speak out against this war.

Owen had firsthand experience with the horrors of World War I. In fact, he was a

Lieutenant that died, “…while leading his platoon in an attempt to cross a canal and attack the

enemy line” (Benz 14). His prominent role placed him in a key position to truly report on the

war. He was a soldier and a leader that dealt with the conflict day after day. Before all this

occurred, Owen who had, “…suffered a series of traumas on the front lines, was already at

Craiglockhart [Hospital]…” (Benz 2). One of these traumas was the notorious shell shock (Ağır

216). At the same time, Sassoon, author of “Soldier’s Declaration,” was considered mentally

unsound for his radical text against the war. He was forced to go to Craiglockhart Hospital with

the diagnosis of shellshock (Benz 1-2). Sassoon met Owen there, and he, “…could provide him

[Owen] with a model for writing poems forged from his experiences at the front lines” (Benz 2).

Therefore, Sassoon was a large influence on Owen. Owen, knowing the horrors of the war based

on his front line experience, was able to look to Sassoon as a teacher. Sassoon made Owen’s

development of this type of poem possible, so Owen was able to better express his knowledge.

The poem holds extremely important for people of all nationalities and races. It gives a

clear picture of the horrors of war. The poem expresses that war is a horrifying and bloody

struggle that is too often disguised by tales of glory. At the time period, the main image of the

war was shaped by the, “…the dominant public rhetoric [that] had been of heroism, patriotism

and sacrifice…” (Frayn 192). The government would often provide only the news that supported

the war, so civil unrest would not be an issue. Therefore, Owen’s audience would only have, “…

read and heard about the strong morale and high spirits among the troops. They only saw

pictures of happy, vigorous soldiers at the front…” (Benz 5). The image of proudly marching
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soldiers in smart uniforms that propaganda often displayed was replaced by images of pain. He

explains, “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, / But limped on, blood-shod. All went

lame; all blind” (lines 5-6). The speaker continues that glory attributed to a war is a lie. He

explains that there is nothing but pain involved. While this stands as a warning to people of all

times, Owen was specifically writing for the individuals brainwashed by war propaganda. The

descriptions in the poem were considered radical, and his audience, one that supported the war,

was resistant to this new idea (Benz 3). By placing such an image in the minds of his readers, the

author hopes to expose the truth about war and end its rein.

There are many aspects of the poem that make it effective for its subject and audience. For

example, each line is rather long, and most are ten syllables. This does not change substantially

throughout the whole piece, and it succeeds in mimicking the exhausted and monotonous mood

that hangs over the soldiers in the poem. The poem itself shows this misery in lines such as, “And

towards our distant rest began to trudge” (line 4). The men are utterly exhausted, and the long,

steady lines help to mimic this slow, dragging feeling in the reader. The rhyme scheme does little

to liven this oppressive mood. The first stanza follows an ABABCDCD rhyme scheme. Again,

this mimics the steady, regular marching described. Then, the next two stanzas change. They are

both shorter than the first as they describe the action of gas being dumped in the trench and about

a man that is not able to get his mask on fast enough. Other structural elements can be seen when

Owen uses all capitals in the first line. It is interesting to note that by, “Starting [the] stanza with

first in lower case and then in capitals, Owen alarms both the soldiers and readers against gas

attack” (Ağır 218). This quickens reader’s pace out of the drudgery for some moments to create a

more fearful mood. The rhyme scheme during these next two stanzas is disrupted as well to help

convey the confusion and panic that the soldiers experience. Then, the last stanza goes back to its
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regular, plodding rhyme scheme to help explain that the soldiers have no time to stop for one man.

By showing stanza length and rhyme scheme falling back into control, the author helps reiterate

that this poor fellow is just one of many and that the war will only lead to more deaths as it drags

on.

Owen’s choice of words is very important to this poem as well. For example, Owen chose

to use the word “sludge” (line 2). This is commonly taken to simply be muddy earth. However,

the word’s connotation holds much more meaning. Santanu Das explains in “Slimescapes” that,

“The mud was not just churned up earth, but compounded of organic wastes, empty shells, iron

scraps and rotting human flesh” (qtd. in Benz 4). This word works to give a more complete and

notorious image of the environment. It is not just muddy earth, it is rotting bodies and metal from

bomb shells and weapons. It is a revolting and terrible circumstance.

However, his most powerful technique in the poem could possibly be imagery. Owen

uses gory imagery and symbolism to produce the feelings of ethos. The typical image of the day

of a proudly marching soldier in a smart uniform on various forms of propaganda is replaced by

images of soldiers, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like

hags” (lines 1-2). Besides showing the terrible misery and illness that the soldiers must endure

each day in the trenches, Owen ensures that it also is used to show, “…that the soldiers have

been effectively dehumanized” (Benz 6). By using a simile to compare them to “hags” (line 2),

Owen effectively shows that their dignity as a person has been wiped away by the war. The

imagery describing their pain and inability to stand normally, works on the ethos and readers

envision such a scene in their minds. Another source of imagery he uses is when the gas is

dropped in the trenches. Owen writes, “Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, / As

under a green sea, I saw him drowning” (lines 13-14). The image of the water and drowning
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helps convey the horrid helpless feeling that the narrator has. It is like he is watching a man

under water or from behind a pane of glass. He can watch, but he cannot do anything to pull his

comrade out of the scene. This imagery also makes the scene a, “…dreamlike scene, which is

between reality and fantasy…” (Ağır 218). Again, this reinforces the horrible feeling that the

narrator has. The horrors of the war transcend into a sort of human imagination; this scene makes

the war feel too horrible to be true. Yet another example is how he writes, “If you could hear, at

every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” (lines 21-22). Readers hear

the blood bubbling forth, and it creates a sick feeling in one’s stomach. This effectively creates

the mood of unbelief and just anger over war. Like the narrator feels for the man in the gas, the

reader is moved by the ethos to feel for the soldiers.

Authors like Wilfred Owen spoke out in a time when World War I was a glorified affair.

Being a soldier himself, Owen knew too well the horrors of war. This was especially true due to

the fact that new and infamous weapons had been created through the use of technology. He

boldly called the propaganda a lie, and he revealed the unpopular truth to a public that was

already set in rejecting his words. However, his poem’s careful structure, techniques, and

language carefully call on ethos to touch his ignorant audience. He created a lasting image of

what war was really like to testify to people of all ages.

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Works Cited

Ağır, Bariş. “The Death of Patriotism: Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est as an Anti-War

Manifesto.” Tarih Kültür ve Sanat Araştırmaları Dergisi, no. 2, 2013, p. 212-

220. EBSCOhost, doi:10.7596/taksad.v2i2.227. Accessed 15 April 2019.

Benz, Stephen. “The Poet as Rhetor: A Reading of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum

Est.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 41, no. 3, Spring 2018, pp. 1–17. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.2979/jmodelite.41.3.01. Accessed 15 April 2019.

Frayn, Andrew. “Social Remembering, Disenchantment and First World War Literature, 1918-

1930.” Journal of War & Culture Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, Aug. 2018, pp. 192–

208. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/17526272.2018.1490072. Accessed 15 April 2019.

Smith, Dana. “First World War Veterans.” Flickr, Flickr, 26 May 2018,

www.flickr.com/photos/dana_smith/42417926721/in/photolist-27CjXNa-Sw7P5a-

21Su6jS-QDJj3G-QCwVK3-2ajBEcw-2dv9tMs-cr3oof-V9SUbc-MEDk73-CXiAGF-

2cJAPLb-HPGpAA-2cNXcAi-2cNXkje-23q8Qxo-S1AH6H-25rcfFB-K3WmE1-

2cNXk2F-24wY2Ne-RYU7zL-29XPrRc-2bkP9Zd-QCwVGh-S3J2mx-21ghEvs-

2a2CAen-2ajBD5G-2cKDAHW-FM6DGZ-Vh7rAh-2a2CzEX-2wY5Qo-22FnXCL-

P3LVYc-2bqgL9P-2cNXgSp-MNrr6H-2bQYduu-21raK63-S5XUXF-2bGWNp5-

GBv7JH-22txZmu-P6EhLF-Xp5gMM-EuRv4Z-2bGWJRJ-2bGWMvb.

Wilfred Owen. Dulce et Decorum Est. The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J.

Mays, shorter 12th ed., W. W. Norton, 2017, pp.878-879.

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“World War 1: A Comprehensive Overview of the Great War.” Edited by Scott Rank, History on

the Net, Caron Broadcasting, Inc., 16 Nov. 2018, www.historyonthenet.com/world-war-1-

comprehensive-overview-great-war. Accessed 23 April 2019.