To have a better understanding of the poem, it is important to understand some of Wilfred Owen’s history. Owen enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles on October 21st 1915. He was eventually drafted to France in 1917. The birth of Owen’s imagery style used in his more famous poems was during his stay at Craiglockhart War Hospital, where he met Siegfried Sassoon (another great war poet). Owen’s new style (the one that was used in “Dulce et Decorum Est”) embellished many poems between August 1917 and September 1918. On November 4, 1918, W

In the second stanza, the pace of the narrative is increased. Owen describes the flurry of activity that takes place when it dawns on the platoon that they have the hazard of gas to deal with. He begins by writing “Gas, GAS!”( line 9), which instantly grabs the attention of the reader, and by writing it first in lower case and then again in capitals, he gives an impression of the rising alarm in the solders. Owen uses the expression “an ecstasy of fumbling”(line 9) to describe the soldiers trying desperately to get out and fit their gas masks, the word “ecstasy”(line 9) being used to give us the impression of the complete, all consuming panic which the soldiers feel when they notice the gas shells. This is effective because it is a complete contrast to the image of the soldiers before the shell, at first they were trudging on, “drunk with fatigue”(line 7), but are suddenly forced into an “ecstasy of fumbling”(line 9) by the falling of the gas shell.

In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile in line one, “Bent double, like old beggars” not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile “coughing like hags” ,in line two, helps to depict the soldiers’ poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers. By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers’ journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they must have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the e

Some topics in this essay:
Canal Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen, Decorum Est”, Rifles October, Wilfred Owed, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen’s, et decorum, owen describes, , gas shells, decorum est”, “dulce et decorum, War Hospital, “dulce et, et decorum est”, mustard gas shells, gas shell, wilfred owen, owen makes, flung wagon, gas masks,