Yuliya Grebneva

Poetry
Dr. Robinson
Horace Lied to Us About Dulce
Wilfred Owen wrote a preface to his poetry book shortly before his death where he
expressed that [his] subject is War, and the pity of War. / The Poetry is in the pity. (43). That is
why war poetry always gets me. It always finds a way to my emotions. War poetry is personal and
it can always reach, even if the reader has no experience with war. War has always been there and
humanity always suffered because of it. Owen was killed being very young, yet he left behind
Dulce at Decorum Est and some others, and this particular poem is one of my favorite poems ever.
Ever. It always reminds me of Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, which is one of my
favorite pieces as well. Both the poem and the book go hand in hand with each other. In his work
Owen chose every word very carefully, and the poem is very dynamic, that is why some parts are
read just on one breath and some are slow and miserable like stomach ache. I guess it is the way war
is, and I am saying guess because that is the only thing I can do in terms of my thinking about war
guess. Some days drag; people drag their feet because of exhaustion for days, weeks, months. And
then BAM! Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! (9). Heavy and miserable, this poem is a snapshot of any war,
perhaps.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
through sludge, Owen writes in lines one and two. There are many consonant sounds that produce
coughing-, bronchitis-like, whistling, scratchy, gargling sounds and cacophony of hags, cursed,
through, sludge makes it hard to read. Alliteration is very prominent in line And towards our
distant rest began to trudge. (4). Notice the amount of t and s sounds and how close they are
together, which creates boots mashing dirt, slurpy sounds. And then in line nine we are slammed

Comment [Y1]: NCTE 3.1 - know skills of the

English language.
Literary devices

with alliteration in trochee An ecstasy of tumbling, / fitting the clumsy helmets just in time.
Trochaic pentameter is a feature of chants, so we get a feeling that this attack is like a curse.
The simile of hags and the metaphor of haunting flares, make the events sound like a
horrifying dream, something that is so terrifying and suspense-filled. No one can get away from
haunting flares. They follow and constantly terrify, but the men turned [their] backs on those
very real and aggressive ghosts. The men toward [their] distant rest began to trudge. (4). The rest,
as the poet notes, is far away and the word trudge gives this sense that it will take a while to get
there. Comparing soldiers to old beggars works in two ways. First, the men look worn out in their
torn dirty uniforms and many of them lost their boots. But they are not young or middle-aged
beggars. They are old. Even the young soldiers are old the war robbed them all of youthful
strength, both spiritual and physical. And the image of old is being reinforced until line eight. The
men limped on, all went lame, which means that they all had their legs or feet injured but old
people walk lame too. (6). And then Owen adds after pause all blind some of them might have
had eyes injured or lost, but they are all blind numb and blank. (6). They are Drunk with fatigue;
deaf even to the hoots / Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. (8). So we get this
sense of endless exhaustion that took over not only the men but also the weapons. Owen personifies
Five-Nines, making them seem somewhat human used and restless victims of war.
The pace of the poem shifts suddenly in line nine. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of
fumbling, / fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; everything and everyone is moving very fast,
powered by instinct of self-preservation. Moreover, it is fumbling, clumsily putting on the helmet,
as if blind. Fingers refuse to cooperate under stress. But someone still was yelling out and
stumbling / and floundring like a man in fire or lime (11, 12). It is a commotion of all blind
men and one of them did not get a chance to put on his helmet, which means gas mask, it seems, or
both perhaps. And of course, it is not just one, but Owen shows us only one man symbolically.
There were many more men who did not have enough time to put on a gas mask or protect

Comment [Y2]: NCTE 3.1- know skills of the

English language.
Literary device

themselves some other way. There was no other way... It is a man moving hectically as if caught on
fire (parts of his body that were exposed to gas were burning) or trying to get out of a sticky snare.
And then another image it is not fire or a snare. Dim, through the misty panes and thick green
light, / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. (14, 13). Owen describes to us chlorine gas
attack through this colorful allusion. Mustard gas had yellowish-brown color, whereas chlorine gas
was greenish-grey. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering,
choking, drowning. (15, 16). The image of drowning occurs again. This terrifying drowning on dry
land is so much more painful and vivid. It is possible to drown not in the water. Chlorine gas
affected soft tissue first, burning eyes, making eyelids swell and seal eyes shut; burning nose, throat
and lungs, scarring them and blistering skin. The man plunges. It is a sudden drop, but he drops
forward. And again we get an image of burning, guttering.
If in some smothering dreams you could pace / Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
changes the pace of the poem again. (17, 18). We are back to walking, pacing. It is as if he stopped
writing for some time, so they could collect bodies. He picks up a pencil and continues. We can take
a breath again and continue reading in slower pace. The attack is over, and injured and fallen are
taken; tired men continue their way to rest that is so far away. Note that Owen goes back to the idea
of bad dream and here he uses smothering to reinforce choking sensation of chlorine gas and bad
dream that is impossible to wake up from and just shake it off. From now on until the end of the
poem we will be trapped in this smothering dream, being witnesses of horrors that are taking over
us, watching this soldier choke and suffer. And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, / His
hanging face like a devils sick of sin; this line is full of images. (19, 20). Alliteration of watch,
white, writhing creates moan-like sounds. White eyes are most likely described the way they
are because the man is in tremendous pain, his eyes are rolled kind of inwards. By hanging face
we can be certain that this man has his face burned, blistered and deformed. The features are not in
place they are supposed to be in. It is a face full of suffering, compared to the face of devil who is

sick of sin. This particular simile can be read couple different ways. Just this mans face can be a
representation of tortures of hell on earth. This face is also distorted with pain, sorrow, horror, as if
the devil were to have the same face greeting new sinners, welcoming them to his inferno and
being sick of it.
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, Owens diction
in these four lines is very colorful. (21 24). The words jolt, gargling, corrupted, obscene,
vile, sores possess negative tones to them. We do not think of pleasant things. We think of
convulsions, bubbling sounds that are especially horrific together with blood, violation, coarseness
and repulsiveness, evil and immorality, inflammation. All these words are applicable to war and
what it causes and in particular all these words are applicable to damage done by chlorine gas attack.
But then we have innocent tongues on which those sores are incurable. Soft tissue is affected
the most and is affected first because gas gets in contact with it. War takes life and innocence. War
corrupts body and spirit. Harm that has been done by war is impossible to turn around. Frothcorrupted lungs will never be the way they were before; they will never inhale as freely as they did
before. I want to point out that lines 21 through 24 are read on one breath. The words are pouring
out; there is bitterness in these lines.
And then to add to bitterness, there is more but generously seasoned with regret and anger
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, /
The old Lie: Dolce at decorum est / Pro patria mori. (25 28). High zest is referred to war
propaganda sugarcoated, attractive idea of dying for a great cause. Ardent for some desperate
glory has a load of irony on it. Ardent and desperate overload each other. They both have
passion, loudness of feeling, eagerness. We get the idea that young people absorb the great Lie
(which is capitalized by Owen to make it even greater) and are overflowed by passion without

reason; overflowed by romanticized idea of war. That is why it is so bitter if they (everybody who
does not know the war) knew what it does, no one would romanticize it, no one.