The View of War in "dulce Et Decorum Est" and "anthem for Doomed Youth"

Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Anthem For Doomed Youth" are poems describing the horrific life of War. In both poem's Owen uses strong imagery to help us have a better view of what war is like for soldiers and their loved ones. Through his shifting rhythms, dramatic description, and raw images, Owen seeks to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the patriotic clichés of those who beautify war.

Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" was written during World War I. World War 1 was a conflict that decimated a generation of young Europeans and opened the public's eyes to the sheer inhumanity of large-scale trench warfare.

"Dulce Et Decorum Est" is a magnificent, and terrible, description of a gas attack suffered by a group of soldiers in World War 1. One in the group is unable to get on his gas mask, and suffers horribly. Owen seems to deeply oppose the intrusion of one nation into another by his view through his two poems. He shows us how the British media and public comforted themselves with the fact that, all the young men dying in the war were dying heroic deaths. The reality is the soldiers were dying obscene and terrible deaths. Owen wanted to illustrate how vile and inhumane the deaths really were. There is a vague sense of Owen saying that people will encourage you to fight for your country, but in reality they are signing themselves up for an unnecessary death.

In "Dulce Et Decorum Est" Owen utilizes a variety of powerful poetic devices in order to depict death in war as a brutal experience. Alliteration serves to draw the attention of the reader, as expressed in: "And watch the white eyes writhing in his face," (Owen 19) which creates a blunt and challenging image within the reader's mind. Further, in "his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" (Owen 20) it is through the use of simile that the poet arouses the sympathy of the responder as they witness the grotesque nature of such a death. In the poem he uses the first, second and third persons, He uses the first person singular and the second person plural to make us see that he experienced what he is talking about in the poem. He uses, for example, "we" in lines 2,3 and 18, and "I" in line 14, "my" (line 15) and "me" (line 16).

In Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth", the reader sees the horrors of war and how unfortunate it is to die in war. For example; "The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires." (Owen 8-9) Owen fought in World War I and wrote this poem while in a hospital recovering from shell shock. "Anthem for Doomed Youth" solemnly discusses death in war and shows how those who die in war do not receive the normal ceremonies that are used to honor the dead.

Owen relates to his audience