A rhetorical device is a technique that an author uses to convey to the reader a meaning with the goal of persuading the reader towards considering a topic from a different perspective. Owen uses many of these devices in almost all of his poems, one of them being ‘Dulce et Decorum est’.
The title of the poem is a sarcastic play on words, this poem being a retort to one published previously by Ms Glasgow, under the same name. The 28-line poem is narrated by Owen himself. It tells us of a group of soldiers in World War I, forced to trudge ‘through sludge’, though ‘drunk with fatigue,’ marching slowly away from the falling explosive shells behind them. As gas shells begin to rain on them, the soldiers begin to scramble to put on their gas masks and save themselves. In the rush, one man clumsily drops his mask, and the narrator sees the man ‘yelling out and stumbling / and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.’ Owen then talks about how he has to throw the man into the back of a wagon and the man's ‘hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin.’
This poem is very effective because of its excellent manipulation of the emotional parts of poetry. Owen’s use of vivid language emphasizes his point, showing that war is terrible and devastating. The use of extremely graphic imagery adds even more to his argument.
The main example would be the first stanza, which uses compelling adjectives to describe the situation and their surroundings. The men turned their backs on the ‘haunting flares’. This puts the image of men under great suffering in the mind of the reader, haunted and ghost-like, as though in a trance. Typically, ghosts are associated with fear, something that Owen is well aware of, as he subtly links it with the soldiers. This, along with the description of the soldiers as ‘old beggars under sacks’ builds up a contradiction to the heroic image that soldiers had, a direct contradiction to the title. Lines such as “knock-kneed”, “coughing like hags”, “Drunk with fatigue” and “limped on, blood-shod” are all examples of the horrific conditions that the soldiers lived in. Moreover, the phrase "blood shod" shows how the troops have been on their feet for days, never resting. Also, the fact that the gassed man was ‘flung’ into the wagon reveals the urgency of the fight. The fact that one word can add to the meaning so much shows how the language adds greatly to its effectiveness. At the time the poem was written, this idea would not have been widely accepted and would have shocked readers back home. Civilians would have been surprised by these aspects of war and this instilment of sympathy was a strange thing for war.
Through the effective use of all of these tools, this poem conveys a strong meaning and persuasive argument. The poem's use of excellent diction helps to more clearly define what the author is saying. Words like "guttering", "choking", and "drowning" not only show how the man is suffering, but that he is in terrible pain that no human being should endure. Other words like writhing and froth-corrupted say precisely how the man is being tormented.
Likewise, the use of figurative language in this poem also helps to emphasize the points that are being made. As Perrine says, people use metaphors because they say "...what we want to say more vividly and forcefully..." Owen capitalizes greatly on this by using strong metaphors and similes. Right off in the first line, he describes the troops as being "like old beggars under sacks." This not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Owen also compares the victim's face to the devil, seeming corrupted and baneful.
A metaphor even more effective is one that compares "...vile, incurable sores..." with the memories of the troops. It not only tells the reader how the troops will never forget the experience, but also how they are frightening tales, ones that will the troops will never be able to tell without remembering the extremely painful experience. These comparisons illustrate the point so vividly that they increase the effectiveness of the poem. The most important means of developing the effectiveness of the poem is the graphic imagery. They evoke such emotions so as to cause people to become sick.
The images can draw such pictures that no other poetic means can, such as in line twenty-two: "Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs." This can be disturbing to think about. It shows troops being brutally slaughtered very vividly, evoking images in the reader's mind. In the beginning of the poem the troops were portrayed as "drunk with fatigue." With this you can almost imagine large numbers of people dragging their boots through the mud, tripping over their own shadow. Later in the poem when the gas was dropped, it painted a psychological image that would disturb the mind. The troops were torn out of their nightmarish walk and surrounded by gas bombs. How everyone, in "an ecstasy of fumbling" was forced to run out into the mist, unaware of their fate. Anyone wanting to fight in a war would become nervous at the image of himself running out into a blood bath. The graphic images displayed here are profoundly affecting and can never be forgotten.
Owen used this poem to bring the plight of the soldiers to the attention to the people back home who thought that fighting for your country was good and proper. He was deeply offended and aggravated by the views of civilians back home He wanted them to be aware of the pain and anguish of war. He felt incredibly passionate about condemning the war and his feelings are reflected by the clipped sounds he uses throughout the poem, although sparsely. An example would be the alliteration in the first stanza when he describes the soldiers as ‘knock-kneed’ as opposed to simply scared.
The poem ties it all together in the last few lines. In Latin, the phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro partria mori" means: "It is sweet and becoming to die for one's country." Owen calls this a lie by using good diction, vivid comparisons, and graphic images to have the reader feel disgusted at what war is capable of. This poem is
extremely effective as an anti-war poem, making war seem absolutely horrid and revolting, just as the author wanted it to.
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