Read the poem below by Wilfred Owen. Respond to it in some way and then make a connection between this poem and All Quiet.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST by 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 towards 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.
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
If you liked this poem, search out other WWI poetry. Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brook are all good places to start. Poetry from this era is very interesting and realistic.
Lit Terms 2
6 years ago
13 comments:
He certainly has a descriptive ways of telling things. The poem gave me a better idea of how mustard gas victims reacted and looked while they were dying. I had been wondering about it, but I guess that sounds kind of creepy, now.
Anyway, the way mustard gas is described in the poem and how it is described in All Quiet are very similar. Both of them tell how people were warned of gas through shouting, but some of them either didn't get the message or were far too slow to put their masks on. Either way, it was a horrific way to die. Then, the way mustard gas was said to creep in was the same. Both the poem and story tell how it sweeps in like a yellowish water, sinking into the trenches and swallowing people up.
I wonder if the people that lived through the war ever looked at normal fog the same way after experiencing a mustard gas attack.
--Felicity
Ok...I think that the entire book "All quiet on the western front," can be explained by that tiny little poem. Although the book wasn't my favorite it gave me a better understanding and appreciation of the life of a soldier. This poem does the same thing. It is well written and is written with emotion.
-Bella
This poem definitely gives you a clear picture of what it looks like to witness a gas attack. Like the book, it tells and gives imagery of battle on the front lines of WWI.
--Derek M.
wow, I really like how descriptive that poem was.
-Elijah
In the book "All Quiet on the Western Front" the soldiers had to go through the same ordeal as the soldiers in the poem. The soldiers in both the book and poem had to deal with fatigue, hunger, and death. In both cases, the men sounded like they were tired and through with the war.
-Hannah
I like the way the author describes the men as they were marching. You can really get the picture in your mind of barefoot men, most of them so tired they could barely stand up much less march. Also, you can also see the picture of the gas attack and the man that got caught out in the middle of it. You know it was a terrible sight to see because the author said that you wouldn't want to children about it. This was a good poem.
Graham H.
The poem shows what war is really like. Even though we honor the brave soldiers it will never be enough after the horrible experiences they went through. It is very descriptive and almost allows you to see the scenes through their eyes, and gives you a clear sense of some of the emotional trama they suffered. Whitney
The poem definitely gave me a better understanding of how a soldier might want someone who wasn't in the war to perceive going through it. It also deepened what the author in "All Quiet On The Western Front" was trying to stress in saying how brutally tantalizing and macabre this type of warfare was. Zdravka
I have sympathy for the poor soldiers who could not place their masks on in time in both the poem and in All Quiet. I think that the poem gives more vivid details of how the mustard gas effects someone. You can visualize the horrifying image of someone who has inhaled the mustard gas. In the background I imagine the tired, and weary soldiers watching as their fellow friend suffers a painful death.
Often I think it's hard for people to express the horrid things they witness with words, and they're only capable of replaying it in their mind and are never released from it. It's as if it's so terrible their words can't connect with the reality. However, obviously this author is talented enough to break through and he gets my kudos for that.
~Lydia
This poem as well as All Quiet on the Western Front really gives me a new perspective and an idea of how terrible and straining the war really can be, even though I've never experienced anything even close to it. The descriptions of people dying and desperately trying to merely survive through the day really makes me think about how much people take for granted in life. While it is extremely horrible what some of the people went through, how much more would it make us appreciate life if we experienced such for ourselves? Even the worst situation in our lives, like going to school, would seem a privilege to us. We would be less focused on small, meaningless problems and focus on enjoying and cherishing every last breath that we have, because we would realize how easily it can be snatched from us. I enjoyed the book and poem, and that's not just bull=) -Allie
Allie, in Holocaust Lit, we read an excerpt from journal entries from kids your age. Whereas, in our country, kids complain all the time about going to school, this kid wrote in his journal that what he misses most about life before is getting to go to school. I read Three Cups of Tea last semester and there was a picture of the men of a village carrying crossbeams up a mountain to build their school because the truck got stuck. They were that desperate for their kids to have an education. I spent much of this week praying for snow to cancel school. Kind of makes you rethink your priorities, huh? Puts things in perspective... Great comments, all of you!
This poem fills me with sadness. It overwhelms me. These were the same feelings I was feeling in "All Quiet On The Western Front." It is hard for me to even think of such excruciating pain.
Danielle
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