Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen

‘Dulce et decorum est' pro patria mori’ - ‘it is sweet and right' to die for your country’

- The poem is set in the First World War against a backdrop of a battlefield scene. - The narrator is a part of the experience. - Physically and mentally exhausted soldiers are making their way back to their camp. They are shown af if they were beggars. - The poem recasts the dangers caused by chemical warfare started by the Germans during the war. - The poet highlights how a friend soldier of his was killed because he couldn't find a mask in time. - The poem is an anti-war poem set against the romantic illusion of the glory of war. It projects unnumbered kinds of death that war brings upon the youth. - Owen suggests that if people could see what he had seen they would never be able to tell any enthusiastic thing about war to their children. - The poem is a mockery of the meaning of the title that 'it is sweet and right to die for your own country'. - Owens's disdain for the war and the horrors that the soldiers experienced becomes evident throughout his poetry. - No matter how noble the cause is, the individual soldier can expect nothing but misery in combat, an ignominious death and should be unfortunate enough to become a casualty. - The title of the poem is in Latin and is a line extracted from a common phrase from a Roman poet, which was commonly used during World War I. The phrase was a saying by Horace. - The principle theme of the poem is 'war' and 'the destruction it causes' - Thematically he paints the reality about the battlefield where wars are fought. Soldiers die helplessly for their country. - The Latin phrase is proved to be useless. - He requests the readers not to believe any glory of war.