gas masks on. One man is not fortunate enough to get his on in time. The lines, "under a green sea, I saw him drowning" (14) and " . . . before my helpless sight"(15) tell the reader that despite the number of people that are there, there is nothing that can be done to save this man from dying. But it is the third stanza that marks the permanency of war: "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,/He plunges at me, guttering, chocking, drowning" (15-16). Dreaming or having nightmares are something that we all have experienced at one point or another in our lifetime. To the speaker of this poem his dreams are filled with the memories of this man chocking and gasping for air. .
The speaker then challenges the reader to dream of having to pace behind the wagon where they have laid their fellow soldier and hear the sounds the body makes due to the effects of gas on the body:.
. . . watch the white eyes writhing in his face,.
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;.
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 cores on innocent tongues,- (19-24).
Owen's language in the forth and final stanzas, paints a picture that is so vivid that enables readers to see this experience in their mind and allows them to easily refuse the offer that the poet presents.
Owen's realistic descriptions form the foundation of the poem. It is the last few lines of the forth stanza that Owen points out that war is not all glory and honor. It is here that the reader is taken back to the title of the poem. The title "Dulce et Decorum Est" means "it is sweet and .
meet to die for one's country. Sweet! and decorous!" (Tuma, 203). If the reader was only able to experience this event that the speaker is referring to .
then they would never tell children the lie of "dulce et decorum est'/Pro patria mori" (27-28).
I. INTRODUCTION Are you really what you eat? Why are people born with certain unique tendencies? Are matter and spirit separate, or the same? Although seemingly unrelated, these questions are unified by the subject under consideration in this paper: the Hindu caste system. The caste system itself...
