Unknown Photographer, Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum est appealed to a people still in shock over the devastation and terror of the war by its agonising and constant recall of its atrocities. A war that resulted in 20 million fatalities and 21 million injuries is a difficult tragedy to absorb. Owen's poem addressed a war-weary generation that the government had failed to recognise since it still had a patriotic and upbeat view of the conflict. For Owen, the act of fighting is a "vile" (Owen, 1965, line 24) spectacle of misery rather than a joyful celebration of bravery. The poem's concluding lines refer to a British generation that proudly sent its men to battle without realising the horrors that would follow because they wanted the war to be ended by Christmas.

For Owen, it also refers to the generation whose government used propaganda to persuade more impressionable young men that the war was a noble cause. Owen's depictions of illness, death, and gruesome experiences reveal a side of war that is hidden from official propaganda. The second stanza's in-media res, which Owen (1965, lines 10–11) refers to as "Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling / Fitting the awkward helmets just in time," draws the reader into a close-up scene of the reality of war. It was an unending nightmare and misery for Owen, one that keeps coming back. Due to Owen's steadfast aim to capture the raw reality of the soldier experience, the poem has endured as the "best-known poetry of the First World War" (Hughes, 2010, p. 164). His concluding lines, which are the most frequently quoted in the entire poem, refute the magnificent and honourable label that propaganda has worked so hard to create for war:

If you could hear the blood coming from the froth-corrupted lungs and gargling at every shock,...

My buddy, you wouldn't teach children eager for some desperate glory the old lie that "Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori" with such vigour. lines 21–28 of Owen (1965).

Written by: Name Style