The Old Lie Shattered

Wilfred Owen strips away the romanticized glare of wartime propaganda to expose the agonizing, blood-soaked realities of the Great War

For One’s Country

“Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori” translates to “How sweet and fitting (or Glorious) it is to die for one’s country.” The first four words of this phrase are also the title of the popular poem by Wilfred Owen. Owen was a soldier and poet in the Great War, also known as the First World War, which ravaged across all of Europe from 1914-1918. “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a complex poem with a lot of meaning within the surface of the page. To better understand all that is wrapped up in Owen’s text, one must dive deep and pick apart every aspect of this poem. Through his use of intense imagery and vivid language, Owen is able to erase the line between how war is depicted and the realities of war.

The context of the poem is that it takes place in WWI, as stated before. The perspective comes from the soldiers who are in the fight, contrary to other poems at the time from propaganda poets who glorified the war and promoted it. The speaker is not any specific soldier, but rather a representation of all soldiers who have experienced the horrors of war and made it out to tell the tale. Who this soldier is speaking to is people who have not witnessed war firsthand. He could be talking to those who are about to join up to go and fight, the parents of other soldiers, politicians and generals who call the shots in the war to end all wars, or the poets who write about war in a different tone. Owen wrote this poem with four stanzas. Each stanza has a different number of lines; it keeps the poem unpredictable and goes against the norm. This can be compared to war. War is not always by the books and can be vastly different from other wars. Owen creates a poem that appears to be a sonnet but is different and new, just as WWI was a new era of war. 

Owen’s poem is truthful, gory, and grim. He does not hold back when telling the story of the soldiers who fought in this great war. The first two lines of the poem paint the picture of the state of the soldiers. In line two, the speaker says, “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge” (Owen Line 2). The men are tired, worn, and dragging along through mud. The stanza gives the image of a long and drawn-out war that has no end. The soldiers within the story seem to be on their last leg. They have “blood-shod” (Line 6) feet, meaning they are walking through blood with blood on them. They are “Drunk with fatigue” (Line 7). The war takes such a toll on a man’s body that he acts as if he is drunk, just as someone does when they are sleep-deprived for so long. The final line of the first stanza sets up a perfect transition into the second. A gas attack comes upon the group of weary soldiers and sends them into a state of panic. The first line of stanza two shows the scurry to save one’s life, “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling” (Line 9). Unfortunately, one soldier does not put his mask on, and everyone helplessly watches through their masks as the soldier chokes and drowns in the gas. The third stanza is short and simple; the man without the mask approaches the speaker and withers away at the speaker’s feet. There is nothing he can do to help the dying man. 

The first three stanzas fully immerse the audience in the scene of war. Owen has completely caught the reader’s attention and brought him into the realities of war. The words he uses are intense and descriptive. They paint a picture in the reader’s head that makes it seem all too real. “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” (Line 16). This last line in stanza 3 perfectly describes the horror of dying from gas inhalation. Owen starts the final stanza by speaking directly to the audience. He says, “If in some smothering dreams…” (Line 17).  This can be interpreted as that what he has witnessed is unimaginable and surreal, and people would only think of it as a dream. The speaker begins to describe the aftermath of the event. They threw the poor man’s body in a wagon and left the scene. On the walk, Owen uses words that vividly place the scene into the audience’s head. “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;/If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/Come gargling from the forth-corrupting lungs,” (Lines 20-22). This description can be a shock of awe to the reader. The simile used in line 20 compares the dead man’s face to that of the devil. This shows how gruesome war can be and how unforgiving it is. The blood that is spit up is in the form of a “cud”. He represents it to “cancer” (line22). The cancer can represent the unknowns of war and the inevitable end of life. At that time, cancer was still a medical mystery that almost led to death. In Owen’s poem, so do the realities of war. 

The last four lines close the poem perfectly and properly display the theme of the text. Owen starts with “My friend” (line 25), showing that the speaker is on the side of the audience and he is giving a warning. He states that after what he witnessed, no man would tell those eager for war and honor to go. He says, “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori” (Lines 27-28). The origin of this statement is a Latin motto, and as stated before, it means that it is sweet to die for one’s country. Owen’s calls this a lie, a propaganda technique to encourage the youth to fight for glory and decorum. War is not as it seems. 

Works Cited:

Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est.

Wilfred Owen uses a Latin phrase which was translated in the footnote. (247n3).