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War In Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'

448 Words2 Pages

War is Misery "Billy Pilgrim could not sleep." The "Men marched asleep." War conjures a myriad of images, opinions, experiences and stark realities. Of the many insights about war offered by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five, the most profound is that war is not a grandiose circumstance that some make it out to be. Similarly, in Wilfred Owen 's "Dulce et Decorum Est", the observation of the tragedies of war provokes the reader to understand the lack of glory in war. However, the most significant lesson arises from experiencing both the novel and the poem together: war brings only anguish to the soldiers who have the misfortune of fighting in them. In Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut shows the inferior side of war through the experiences …show more content…

Owen shows this idea through the use of the phrase, "Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori." This is a Roman phrase that means it is sweet and glorious to die for one 's country. In the poem, there is a great deal of tragic imagery used to show that it is not glorious. The poem showed exhaustion, sickness, and death. Then Owen ends by saying if these events that happened during war are witnessed, then the "lie" that it is glorious to die in war would not be believed. When Owen 's poem and Vonnegut 's insights it shows that war brings anguish to those who fight it. In Billy 's event on the train, the other passengers only allowed him to sleep standing up because he would, "yell... kick... and whimper," from his anguish of war. Combined with Owen 's poem that is full of pain and struggle, there is no doubt about the clear theme, war is misery. Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse Five has a theme that war isn 't exceptional, contrary to what some might say. Wilfred Owen 's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" proposed that if someone observes the horrors of war, then they would question the gloriousness of war. Conseqently together they create the idea that war is just pain

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