Dulce et Decorum Est - Language, tone and structure

Language in Dulce et Decorum Est

Words suggesting exhaustion

In Dulce et Decorum Est Owen does not spare his reader any of the terror of the gas attack. In the first two lines of the poem, the soldiers, many of whom would still have been in their teens, are described as:

• ‘bent double’
• ‘knock kneed’
• ‘coughing’
• cursing through ‘sludge’. 

Even though the third and fourth lines might seem to be positive, the ‘rest’ towards which they ‘trudge’ is ‘distant’. These negative words counter any sense of hope and joy at the prospect of moving away from the front and the ‘haunting flares’.

The gas attack

Given how critical a gas attack was, it is chilling that Owen depicts soldiers ‘fumbling’ l.9 with their equipment. Most get their masks on only ‘just in time’ but a nameless ‘someone’ has succumbed to the attack and it is his sufferings which will dominate the rest of the poem, as he cries out, stumbles and struggles to breathe. It is he who will haunt Owen’s dreams as he ‘plunges’ at him, a word which carries threatening overtones, as if he is attacking Owen. 

This nightmare scenario is heightened by words which gather in intensity: ‘guttering,’ ‘choking,’ and ‘drowning’ in l.16. The use of the word ‘guttering’ is particularly unsettling. A candle gutters as it goes out for lack of air, just as the man dies for lack of oxygen.

Reflection

As Owen moves away from the gas attack, addressing his anger to those at home, he employs direct and powerful verbs. He suggests that, with such knowledge, those at home ‘would not tell’ lies to children ‘ardent’ for glory.

Contrast

Owen uses contrast to intensify the horror experienced by soldiers and his audience. For example, in line 8 he takes the reader off guard: the lethal ‘gas-shells’ (or Five-Nines) drop ‘softly’, as gentle rain might, and are ‘behind’ rather than an overt danger in front. These words seem impotent and unthreatening, yet in line 9 Owen punctuates the first four short sharp words with exclamation marks. Like the troops we are shocked out of the somnambulant atmosphere of the first stanza. The shock of, ‘Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!’ is followed up by ‘an ecstasy of fumbling’ l.9. Owen emphasises the panic by his use if the word ‘ecstasy’, often associated with love and passion but suggesting here extreme actions of a very different nature.

Alliteration

Owen’s use of repeated sounds picks up the alliteration of the title. ‘Dulce’ and ‘Decorum’ are the two contentious, abstract nouns meaning ‘sweet’ and ‘honourable’, which he revisits in the final lines of the poem. Joined as they are by the similar sounds of ‘et’ and ‘est’, they set a pattern for the alliteration which follows. 

Each example emphasises the horror of the event:

• soldiers are ‘Bent’ like ‘beggars’ l.1, who ‘cough’ and ‘curse’. l.2
• the hum of the ‘m’ sounds of lines 5 and 6 sound like a grim lullaby - 

Owen’s use of alliteration builds as the pain worsens. In the ‘wagon’ l.18 Owen exhorts us to ‘watch the white eyes writhing l.19 (the last ‘w’ being an example of eye-rhyme rather than audible). Finally we are asked to envisage ‘vile incurable sores on innocent tongues’ l.24. This final alliteration underlines the startling contrast between the ‘incurable’ nature of the injury and the ‘innocence’ of the victim.

Repetition

Owen also draws the reader’s attention to the key actions and themes of the poem by his use of repeated short, single words:

• ‘All’ is repeated twice in line 6 to ensure we are aware that no one escaped
• ‘Gas! GAS!’, capitalised on the second use, jolts us into the awareness of the terror and horror of the attack
• Lines 14 and 16 are end-stopped with ‘drowning.’, the finality of the word and its repeated use emphasising how impossible it is for Owen to forget the man’s suffering
• Similarly, the image of the man’s ‘face / His hanging face’ l.19-20 is impressed upon our memory by being repeated
• The repetition of the ‘If .. you’ construction at the start of lines 16 and 21 highlights Owen’s anger and direct (almost accusing) communication to his readers.

Verb tenses

In stanza one of Dulce et Decorum Est Owen uses the past tense to describe the plodding retreat from the battle field, as the men ‘marched’ and ‘turned’ and ‘went’.

In stanza two Owen moves the action first into the present continuous, demonstrating the immediacy of action – the men are ‘fumbling’, ‘fitting’. Then he moves into the past continuous: someone ‘was yelling’ whom Owen ‘saw .. drowning.’ This indicates the passage of time, yet how the sight is still very real to Owen.

In stanza three Owen’s nightmares relive the scene in the present tense - as the man ‘plunges’ - and present continuous – the man keeps on ‘guttering, choking, drowning’ in an unending loop of action.

In stanza four the conditional verbs ‘If .. you could’, ‘If you could’, ‘you would not’ (l.17,21,25) challenge the reader / ‘My friend’ in the future to share Owen’s nightmare – and perhaps have the chance to avert it.

Tone

The tone of this poem is angry and critical. Owen’s own voice in this poem is bitter – perhaps partly fuelled by self-recrimination for the suffering he could do nothing to alleviate. Owen dwells on explicit details of horror and misery in order to maximise the impact he wishes to have on those who tell the ‘old Lie’. The way in which he addresses as ‘My friend’ those with whom he so strongly disagrees is ironic.

Structure in Dulce et Decorum Est

Stanzas

The poem consists of four stanzas of various lengths. The first 14 lines can be read as a [3sonnet3) although they do not end with a rhyming couplet, and instead the ab ab rhyme-scheme carries on into the separate pair of lines which constitute the third stanza.

Whilst the initial fourteen lines depict the situation and the events which take place, the last fourteen lines show the consequences of what has happened and Owen’s reflection on it. The final four lines are his injunction to the reader to avert similar suffering in the future.

Versification

Rhythm

Stanza one is largely written using regular iambic pentameter, reflecting the relentless but, sadly, routine nature of the horror the men experience. However, the opening spondees of lines 1, 2 and 5 serve to arrest our attention, as does ‘blood-shod’ and ‘all blind’ in line 6. 

The stumbling, lurching progress of the men through the ‘sludge’ is conveyed by Owen’s use of caesura in the middle of line 5-7. Then, for much of line 8, Owen reverses the metre to trochaic, subtly undermining the routine, just as the shells will disrupt the men’s trudge.

In stanza two the pentameter is disrupted by longer 11 syllable lines (l.9,11,14). The additional beat gives the sense of being out of time. The pace and punctuation also changes to reflect the panic of the men, particularly with the double spondees and emphatic punctuation of line 9.

In the short third stanza, the regularity of l.15 is overturned by the extra syllables and different metres of l.16 – as if the horrific sight is too overwhelming to be constrained by a regular poetic form.

For stanza four Owen uses additional beats to emphasise the particular horror of lines 20 and 24, echoing the pattern of stanza two. He resists making everything neat and orderly. He needs us, through the uncomfortable beat associated with the similes, to hear and feel the pain. By contrast, the hollow emptiness of the final line is illustrated by writing only a trimeter followed by white space.

Rhyme

The heaviness and misery of the men is reflected in the slightly dull and routine ab ab rhyme-scheme. The ‘udge’ sound in English is frequently associated with thickness and limited mobility (l.2,4) just as the ‘umble’ cluster connotes a lack of precision (l.9,11). The long ‘ing’ rhymes also have the effect of slow motion, replicating the horror of slow drowning. 

In the fourth stanza, the grim images of ‘blood’ and ‘cud’ (the bitter tasting, regurgitated, half-digested pasture chewed by cattle) are emphasised both by their rhyme and their delayed position at the end of their respective lines (21 and 23). By rhyming ‘glory’( l.26) with ‘mori’ (Latin for ‘to die’) (l.28) Owen makes a point of contrast and irony from the two words which seem to be so much at odds with each other.

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