Wilfred Owen

(1893–1918)

England

Wilfred Owen is one of the most poignant figures in modern literature. “The Poetry is in the pity,” he said, and this famous remark could serve as his epitaph. Within the few adult years granted to him, Owen pursued a course of development that went from strength to strength. His interest in experimental techniques led him to master the use of half rhyme; this would become his most easily recognizable poetic signature. He also had a gift for lyricism that was bitterly tempered by “the truth un-told, / The pity of war, the pity war distilled.” The result was a series of elegies and metrical statements as terse and stark as those carved on tombstones.

Like an apprentice determined to master his art, Owen immersed himself in the long history of English poetry. He chose for his model and mentor the poet John Keats (see page 640), whose astonishing life’s work ended with his death at twenty-five (about the same age Shakespeare was when he began to write his plays). As a tutor in France for two years, Owen studied the French poets who were producing the tradition-shattering art that would become known as modernist. But all these literary influences were to become secondary to the devastating impact of a war Owen witnessed firsthand.

World War I broke out when Owen was twenty-one; he joined the British army, and the course of his life was determined. His progress in poetry was not made in the halls of an ancient university or in the country retreats where his literary forerunners were privileged to pursue their careers. His progress took place in the muddy purgatory of trench warfare and in the twilight existence of military hospitals.

In one of those hospitals, Craiglockhart, in Edinburgh, the young Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow officer and poet who had already distinguished himself for bravery in battle. Ironically, Sassoon was also the author of some of the most biting antiwar verses ever written (see page 823). Temperamentally, the two men were far apart. Owen was an idealistic youth thwarted by circumstance; Sassoon was an aristocrat appalled by the wartime complacency of his own class. Even so, they became friends and artistic colleagues at once. After Owen’s death, Sassoon became the first important British writer to herald the younger man’s genius and to call attention to what he had accomplished under the most appalling conditions.

In 1918, Owen was listed among those killed in action—a mere seven days before the war ended with a joyous ringing of bells and dancing in the streets.

Dulceet Decorum Est

Make the Connection

Quickwrite

In trench warfare, “no man’s land” is the few hundred yards that separate one army’s lines from another’s. But for the group of writers who became known as the Trench Poets, the war itself was a no man’s land: a dehumanizing, horrific experience that made a mockery of civilization. Wilfred Owen, like many other Trench Poets, died in the muddy trenches of World War I. But his words lived on, bringing to life the evils and obscenities of war for those back home.

What is your most vivid mental image of war? Recall impressions you’ve absorbed from film, photographs, the nightly news, literary works, the words of veterans, or other sources. Close your eyes. Think, “War,” and then record in words what you see in your mind.

Literary Focus

Figures of Speech

Many readers of Owen’s poetry had never visited the front lines, nor would they ever do so. To help his readers see, understand, and feel the foreign subject of war, Owen used figures of speech to describe war’s images and events.

A figure of speech is a word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of another. Among the most common figures of speech are similes, metaphors, and symbols. Early in Owen’s poem, for instance, the poet uses a simile to describe the speaker and his fellow soldiers who lurch forward “like old beggars under sacks” (line 1). Owen also uses oxymoron, a figure of speech that combines apparently contradictory ideas to create a strong emphasis. The word bittersweet, used to describe the feeling of being happy and sad at the same time, is an example of an oxymoron. (The phrases “tough love” and “cold comfort” are other examples of oxymorons.) In literature, “darkness visible” is a famous oxymoron used by Milton in Paradise Lost (see page 367). Owen and other Trench Poets found oxymorons useful in describing the unimaginable slaughter of trench warfare. As you read Owen’s poem, see if you can identify several different kinds of figures of speech.

A figure of speech is a word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of another and is not meant to be understood on a literal level.
For more on Figures of Speech, see theHandbook of Literary and HistoricalTerms.

Background

This poem’s title is taken from the Latin statement Dulceet decorum est pro patriamori, meaning “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” The statement originally appeared in an ode by the ancient Roman poet Horace and has been used for centuries as a morale builder—and as an epitaph, or gravestone inscription—for soldiers. Here the motto is given a bitter twist by a soldier-poet who cannot see how the sentiment it expresses matches the reality he has experienced.

After the introduction of poison gas as a battlefield weapon during World War I, every man in the trenches was equipped with a gas mask. This poem describes the horrible consequences of not getting the mask on in time.

Dulceet Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
/ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
/ Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
/ And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
/ But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
/ Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines° that dropped behind.
/ Gas!GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
/ But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
/ And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime°…
/ Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
/ As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
/ If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
/ Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
/ And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
/ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
/ Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
/ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
/ To children ardent for some desperate glory,
/ The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
/ Pro patria mori.
The Rear-Guard
Siegfried Sassoon

In the battlefield trenches of World War I, enlisted men lived forweeks, sometimes years, in interconnected underground cavernsinfested by rats, with no drainage, poor ventilation, and onlyoccasional dim shafts of natural light. In this poem, the “he” whorecalls a grisly trench episode is the officer-poet, Siegfried Sassoonhimself.

/ (Hindenburg Line,° April 1917.)
/ Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
/ He winked his prying torch° with patching glare
/ From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
/ Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
5 / A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
/ And he, exploring fifty feet below
/ The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
/ Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie
/ Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
10 / And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug.
/ “I’m looking for headquarters.” No reply.
/ “God blast your neck!” (For days he’d had no sleep.)
/ “Get up and guide me through this stinking place.”
/ Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
15 / And flashed his beam across the livid face
/ Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
/ Agony dying hard ten days before;
/ And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
/ Alone he staggered on until he found
20 / Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
/ To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
/ Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
/ At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
/ He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
25 / Unloading hell behind him step by step.

Dulceet Decorum Est

Thinking Critically

1. / What are the “misty panes” in line 13 through which the speaker glimpses the dying man?
2. / An oxymoron is one kind of figure ofspeech. It combines apparently contradictory ideas, such as wise fool. What oxymorons can you find in the poem’s second and last stanzas? What emotions or insights does a figure of speech that expresses contradiction evoke?
3. / Who is the “you” addressed in the final stanza?
4. / A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using a word such as like or as. Explain the similes in lines 23–24. How do they relate to the theme of the poem?
5. / What is the poem’s rhyme scheme? Can you find any half rhymes (words that sound similar but do not rhyme exactly)? Describe the effect that this rhyme scheme has on the overall mood of the poem.
6. / Tone is the attitude a writer takes toward the reader, a subject, or a character. Describe the speaker’s tone in this poem. How does it compare with the tone of today’s war stories or war movies? (Cite some examples in your answer.)

Extending and Evaluating

7. / In the last lines of his poem, Owen refers to the traditional notion of an honorable death for one’s country as “the old Lie.” Do you agree that patriotism’s high-minded idealism is a lie? Or is Owen perhaps stacking the deck by including so many gruesome battle details? In your response, relate Owen’s poem to your own concepts of patriotism and warfare. Be sure to review your Quickwrite notes.

WRITING

Side-by-Side

In an essay, analyze the similarities and differences between Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” and Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “The Rear-Guard” (see the Connectionon page 823). Identify the subject of each poem, and compare and contrast the speakers’ attitudes toward their subjects. Analyze how each poet uses powerful imagery and figures of speech to evoke strong emotions in the reader. How does the language of each poem reinforce the speaker’s attitude? Support your ideas by citing specific words and phrases from the texts.