Essays on Wilfred Owen

World War I marked the violent 20th century. It was characterized by the first mass bombardment from the sky. For the first time in history, chemical weapons were used. And there was first genocide. Every citizen became a soldier. The war involved millions across continents and changed their lives. A story opens with a young British soldier, named Wilfred Owen, who fights on the German lines. His hope is to finally see the end of the war. In a letter from tranches to his mother, he tells about his experiences and feelings. Wilfred is a brave battlefield soldier, who, like his friends, is ...

When World War I broke, earlier poets wrote poems celebrating the outbreak of the First World War. These poems reflected an over-optimistic, sentimental and unrealistic attitude to war that mirrored the attitude of the British people, who assumed that the war was chivalrous and heroic. Rupert Brooke's “The Soldier” is an example of such early World War I poetry, in which Brooke uses strong figurative language and symbols to romanticize and sentimentalize the horrors of war. By 1915, both the British people and poets began to realize how horrific and terrible the war really was, and poems thereafter ...

Wilfred Owen, the poet who poured his heart out in the lines of the war-poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, was himself a soldier who faced the harrowing experiences of war and was left with an everlasting scar on his mind. He could never get over the trauma and tragedy of warfare and his poems are among the most emphatic piece of literary works which denounce warfare and exemplify the brutalities of violence and the ultimate futility which leads to irreplaceable loss of lives and psychological strain. The poem is a first-hand account of the mental effect of war on the mind ...

Wilfred Owen was one of the most prominent anti-war poets of the early 20th century; unlike many of his peers, he dared to depict war as unfeeling, unsympathetic and gritty. In his poems, especially “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, war is shown to be horrible and shocking – a far cry from the romanticism and patriotism of his countrymen. From a sociological critical lens, Owen’s poetry was the start of a backlash against the perceived glory of war (World War I in particular) from someone who understood its grim reality – these poems demonstrate the foolishness of patriotism and nationalism in the face of ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with a portrait and analysis of the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. This is a poem titled in a Latin phrase which goes on in the first verse saying ‘Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori’. This Latin phrase borrowed by Horace, the Latin poet, means that it is sweet and ideal for one to die for his / her country. The poem was written by Wilfred Owen in 1917. The year this poem was written there was a war going on and this was the World War I. According to sources ‘the earliest ...

World War One

“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem written by Wilfred Owen explaining the experience of the use of gas during the First World War. Wilfred Owen was a soldier during the war and also a poet who narrated the experiences he underwent as soldier during the First World War. In his poem he writes about the physical torture as well as the psychological upset that the British soldiers as a result of chlorine gas used by the enemies to attack them. When the gas was released the soldiers had to put on their helmets in time to avoid inhaling the harmful gas. In ...

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen

A Comparative Analysis Although both these poems are by the same British poet and both might be thought of as ‘anti-war’ in different ways, they differ in their structure, use of language and overall emotional impact. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is a sonnet and the structure of the sonnet seems to act as a restraint on Owen’s feelings. The poem also contains an extended metaphor. In talking about the huge loss of life in the First World War, and mentioning the soldiers who “die as cattle” (line 1) (inevitably as if in a slaughterhouse), Owen develops an extended metaphor ...