Dulce et decorum est (quotes)
- Created by: holly rylatt
- Created on: 23-10-18 13:16
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- Quotes
- "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks"
- simile highlights, physical deterioation
- physically played them down before they got to war.
- compares the men to marching like beggars
- Starting the poem off an image of men "doubles" creates the possibility that the soldiers really have become two people: the men they were before war and the creatures that they are now.
- "Men marched asleep"
- the repeated "m" sound reflects the slumbering exhaustion of the men.
- The metaphor emphasises the extreme tiredness of the soldiers
- They were barely even awake or aware of what they were doing
- "Under a green sea"
- The metaphor describes the way the gas smothers the field and the men in it.
- the assonance in 'green' and 'sea' elongates the vowel sound
- this mimics the action of the men suffocation from the gas.
- As they slowly collapse on the ground and die
- "he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning"
- the most disturbing image of the poem
- as a dying soldier reaches out and falls
- his lungs filling with his own blood after ingesting the gas
- the asyndetic list that describes how the soldier is dying
- becomes more powerful and more horrific through the use of onomatopoeic words like 'guttering'
- "froth-corrupted lungs"
- the violent image of death describes a soldier drowning in his own blood after breathing in the gas
- the death is brutal and painful
- the verb 'corruted' shows how excruciating it is to die of gas poisoning
- further emphasized by the fact that the poet is watching his comrades choke on their own blood
- how the soldiers were fed the lie of heroism and glory if they signed up to fighting the war
- "obscene as cancer"
- in this simile, Owen presents us with a short brutal comparison.
- like cancer is a killer, so is was
- the sight of the mans blood is an obscenity:something which should not to be seen
- the adjective 'obscene' emphasises that blood is as offensive to sight as is death, by drowning in poison gas.
- "Gas! Gas! Quick boys!"
- Rapid increase in pace
- shows the panic and emergancy of war
- fumbling for gas masks and helmets
- 'GAS' is in capitals to show the yell of waning and panic
- it is repeated in exclamation mark to convey how much time it took them to realize
- "smothering dreams"
- 'dreams' meant to be good.It is a nightmare
- he is haunted in his dreams
- the verb 'smother' suggests that the poets dreams and memories are slowly killing him.
- "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks"
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