Flashcards on Dulce Et Decorum Est Short
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Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
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Simile. The soldiers are bent with the burden of war
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Knock-kneed, coughing like old hags, we curse through sludge,
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Simile and we are now introduced to the author.
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Till on the haunting flares we turn our backs
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The war has ended for the day
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And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
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The distant rest could be death.
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Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
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The men are like zombìes
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But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
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They lost their boots so it is like the blood are their shoes now.
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Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of tired , outstripped five-nines that dropped behind
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They are so tired tht they r swaying, dunk. The war is still there in the back ground surrounding them.
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Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- an ecstasy of fumbling,
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The sudden exclamotary sentence draws us to action. An ecstasy of fumbling is a really weird sentence. Owen may be trying to show us that the soldiers are so worn out that they can't make sense of what they are doing. It is like they are thriving from the fact that they can die. Like somehow the adventure seems exciting.
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But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
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The situation gets eerie. It is like there is someone who is dying out right beside you but you don't know them yet here you are watching them die. The verb like yelling and stumbling also suggest that they are there in front of you and you are watching them die.
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And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
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Lime, quicklime, is a chemical that burns through human skin. It is like stepping into fire. This is a very graphic image.
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Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
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The green gas is described as a thick light. This shows that the gas is something so man made and artificial. The misty panes could be the breath of the speaker ir it could be condensed tears.
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As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
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The repetition of green allows us to make a similarity between the green light and green sea. The great part is as Owen describes the gas as sea he also describes the man to be drowning. This is a metaphor.
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In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me guttering, choking , drowning
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The verbs again makes us think that he is there in front of us. These to lines are on there own. It is because it is apart from stanza two. It is because stanza two is about what has happened, the past. But now it is what happens, the present as Owen says that he also dreams this. He is saying that instead of dreams he has these nightmares of people suffering and coming at him. It is like a reference back to the zombie. The speaker is directly involved in this as the man plunges at our speaker. But he can't do anything so all he can do is stand there.
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If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
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If only you could have these dreams that are suffering and traumatic. The word you also gives us that direct signal. Like Owen is saying that even if I tell you this you still won't understand the horrors of the war. It creates a gap of isolation that wasn't there before.
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Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
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We just through him in there and let him get tortured.
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And watched the white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
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Owen is telling us that the soldier that was once fighting for his country is now writhing in the back of a wagon. The word writhing is something that you wouldn't associate with the eyes or the face but you would associate it with snakes. The sibilance tht is used links back to the idea of the face and eyes writhing like it is lost all of its features. The devil's sick of sin also show that this thing that I saw is so horrible that even the devil's sick of sin. The sibilance also describes the devil just as john milton did in paradise lost which is really effective.
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If you could hear, at ever jolt , the blood come gargling from the froth-corrrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as cud
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This is revolting. Owen is showing us how humiliating and degrading the destruction of the human body can lead to. What stated as a soldier turned into blood and charred skin just like cancer makes its way through our body destroying us.
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Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tounges,
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Owen says how the soldiers are so innocent and then experience such horrors
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My friend, you would not tell with such I zest
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My friend could mean he is talking to Jessie Pope in a sense of irony by calling her friend. High zest means enthusiasm
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To children ardent for some glory,
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To the children who are young and gullible and passionate fir glory.
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The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est
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The old lie is about a poem by the Roman poet Horatius Flaccus in Odes Book 3 poem 2 called Dulce et Decorum est. Owen is responding to this.
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Pro patria mori
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This line that consists of 3 words brings emphasis on them. It is also like silence.
