“How Sweet and Fitting…”
Dulce et decorum Est by
Wilfred Owen

In history, most countries would focus on the victories and spoils of war, when others question the need for such barbaric occurrences. In the 1920 poem, Dulce et decorum Est, Owen proposes the cycle of decay in all civilizations continues through the man made epidemic; war. The morbid imagery of death and suffering on the battlefields of Europe during World War I intensifies the author’s purpose of having the experience of war not to be viewed as a bold and valiant display of men struggling against their enemies, instead as a melancholic picture of sickness and decrepitude. Owen uses this morose imagery to imply that all wars a

The first stanza of the poem bring to mind the corroding health of the soldiers, who are mentioned as “beggars” The term implies the overall condition as well as the description of their morale. The writer suggests that the soldiers are poor souls, to be pitied for the luck to be there in the midst of death and agony. In addition, Owen uses the choice to comment on the posture and facial appearances of the soldiers. The first stanza would go on to mention the impotence of the soldiers using such descriptive verbs such as “trudge “and “limped” to evoke a visual depiction of these men.

The second stanza would express the confusion and death in vivid detail as Owen recant on the lethal gas shells that bombarded the squad. The author intends to highlight the horrors of war through the constant fear of mustard gas poisoning them. The imagery helps Owen maintains the purpose of how war would poison, and deteriorate the bodies biologically, like a sickness that kills instantly. One reader notes the the depiction of the dead being put in wagons to give the image of a wholesale slaughter of men as cattle as well as give the image of the reference to the black plague when the dead would be put in wagons.