By Eva Sheahan
In honour of Remembrance Day, looking into the artful first-person accounts created during wars is valuable. Out of the destruction and lack of humanity of war often emerges compelling poetry that opens the reader's eyes to the atrocities that occur. Wars are very dark and dangerous times; war exacerbates loneliness and isolation, and the sheer violence of war makes human relationships almost impossible. Humanity is lost as men go into action and use violence and destruction to achieve their goals. However, as a genre, war poetry juxtaposes the backdrop of the brutality of war, as it is art– profound and beautiful. Poetry is a powerful way to express human emotion. Reading poetry written by soldiers reminds us of human nature's desire to create, not destroy. Interacting with poetry written by soldiers in times of trauma and despair is a tool to honour the sacrifices they made for their countries and freedoms; the poetry also serves as a warning to readers of the horrors of war.
A stunning example of powerful war poetry is Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," my favourite poem written by a soldier during the war. Wilfred Owen was a British soldier who served in World War One, starting in January 1917 until November 1918, when he was killed in action a week before the war ended. Almost all of Owen's poetry was written during this time. Quickly, when he enlisted, whatever triumph and heroism Wilfred felt for fighting in the war was revealed as a facade, and he believed with firm conviction that the war should be ended. On January 12th, 1917, Wilfred and his troops were attacked with poison gas, which he depicts in his poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est"
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Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares, we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And 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 sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
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Despite his bravery and triumphs in battle, Owen did not avoid illustrating war's horrors and bleakness. 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' is Latin for 'it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country,' a sentiment often quoted to inspire patriotism, spread by those who, hypocritically, had not faced the brutal reality of war. Owen's poetry tries to show readers the lack of dignity and pain soldiers experienced during the war to combat the glamorized and romanticized ideas of war and battle. He wrote vivid and terrifying poems about warfare in graphic detail. As seen with the gas attack in "Dulce et Decorum Est," Owen used vivid details to depict the atrocities of war. He uses the opening sentence to portray the soldiers' emotional and physical exhaustion and uses the line 'towards our distant rest began to trudge,' illustrating the constant looming presence of death. The gas attack in his poem reveals the panic of the soldiers and eventually a graphic description of a soldier “'flound'ring” like a man in fire or lime' who was caught in the gas. This horrifying scene haunts Owen's dreams. The final paragraph works to explicitly show readers the shocking spectacle of death to expose the irony of spreading the 'old lie', as Owen calls it, that it is noble and honourable to die for one's country.
"Dulce et Decorum Est" remains relevant today because Wilfred Owen offers a brutal, unfiltered perspective on the barbarities of battle that challenge glorified ideas of war that continue to exist today. This poem critiques the propaganda used to glamorize war and recruit, often young and impressionable, soldiers. Using the empathy and introspection that poetry inspires, "Dulce et Decorum Est" reminds readers of the human cost of war and its impact on those who must endure it.
Works Cited
“Dulce et Decorum Est.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est. Accessed 13 Nov.
2024.
“Wilfred Owen.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.