"Dulce Et Decorum Est" Or The Insanity Of The New Age.
...express thoughts and emotions, past generations used different artistic techniques and expressions. Some of the most popular methods were found in music, theatre, dance and poetry. One of the most emotional expressive arts that directly affected the human emotions was poetry which could easily be converted into music. The ancient philosophies reveal to us that poetry was a sophisticated game of opposite emotions, moods, ideas and colorful images. "Poem tells us about life, they shape experience" to which we can relate emotionally and viscerally (Biddle & Fulwiler, 1992, p. 421). Using more contemporary terms we could say that poetry is a rhythmical compression of thoughts that can be written in different style or length and can discuss all kinds of subjects. There is a wide variety of devices used in creating and evaluating poems, such as metaphor, diction, rhythm, rhyme, sounds, tone and atmosphere, etc.
This paper focuses on the tone and other poetical devices used in "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) who shows us trough his experience the insanity of war. The major conflict in the poem is the writer's horror of war and the poem's title "it is sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland" (Roberts & Jacobs, 1998, p. 740)
The poet is actually the speaker and narrator of the poem; a rare combination. In his poem, Owen draws a very realistic picture of the frontline, using such compelling images, words and tone of voice that we are dragged unwillingly into the horror of the war with him. In the first stanza, Owen briefly described the soldiers as being "like old beggars under sacks" (1 line) as they move back from the frontline and get trapped in a chlorine gas attack (Magill, 1992, p.611). The language used in this passage shows us the desolation, destruction and apathy of the war through words such as: "sludge," "trudge," "men marched...
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