Dear students, please read “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – written in 1917/18 by the ‘War Poet ‘ Wilfred Owen, when he was about your age.
Why does the poet say that “dulce et decorum” is “an old lie”? What meaning/s can you, as a young adult, find in the poem?
Which poem/s from Masters’s Anthology can this poem be linked with?
Please share your ideas and post them here as a reply to my post!
thank you,The teacher
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out 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 gas-shells dropping softly 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.
NOTES: Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Spoon River 
Dear teacher,
I think that this poem fits perfectly with the reality we are living today. It’s not easy to talk about war because, as my teacher told me a few weeks ago,it’s like hell on earth. As a teenager I cas easily say that I’am afraid of war and, Who’s not? But, really, when my grandfathers tell me their experiences in war, when they had to stay at home all day long and sometimes they had nothing to eat, or when I read the newspaper and I see nothing but misery, I think that I could be one of those girls or boys who are living war.
I agree with Owens when he says that “dulce et decorum est propatria mori” is an old lie”, because media ,sometimes, talk about the past wars like something glorious, and remember the soldiers like heroes, it’s true they are heroes because they suffered and fought for their country, but unfortunately they suffered for nothing.
It’s an old lie because nobody has to suffer, and mostly because no country has to put at risk the lives of its people.
Let’s think about Paris attacks,people who were having fun died with no reason, killed by men who just obeyed and had no right to kill them.
Now, we remember those facts as “something that happened” and we live in fear that it may happen again, but it’s not right, we can’t stop here, we have to solve our problems without using violence, that only brings evil.
This poem can be linked with Knowlt Hoheimer’s poem (Spoon River Anthology) which talks about war, and a soldier who joined the army because he was a criminal and he would have gone to jail otherwise. At the end when the war ended, he came back home and he said: I would have preferred to go to jail and spend all my life there, rather than going to war and see those atrocities.
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Dear teacher,
I found in this poem lots of brutal expressions, which contribute to emphasize the real feelings of a soldier during a war. But what is a war? War does not prevent other conflicts, war does not save people, war does save countries (just for a few years, if we are lucky). War saves the throne of the king, but millions of people have died for this: and nothing changed. Nowadays, there is still anxiety among countries, because of power. Everyone wants to rule the world and actually, sometimes it is easier to make a war than to speak and make a deal. It is easier just because the concept of war has been covered with mud, and we see war as a glorious event that could bring peace forever. People have been educated that the role of a soldier is important, and it is, and that it is a duty of all men to protect the country. Are soldiers proud of what they must do? Not at all, I think. This poem makes us understand that men have fear, they don’t want to be killed by a bullet, they don’t want to die like that. Saying that war is a glorious event, something to be proud of, is a lie. War has no sense and it changes nothing. It is more effective to deal with problems by talking than by fighting, but I know that it is not always possible, unfortunately.
The theme of the war is presented in the poem of Knowlt Hoheimer in Spoon River Anthology: he was a criminal and he decided to join the army, because he did not want to go to prison. When he died, he said that if he could come back, he would never choose the war again because of its atrocities.
People have to think about it, nobody will be happy at all to join the army for a war!
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Dear teacher,
This poem was written in 1917 by Wilfred Owen when he was 18. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is divided in 3 sections:
1- Reading the first stanza we can understand that the author is giving a description of the environment. Owen wrote in first person so it is obvious that Owen is describing what he lived. They were in a muddy field: the soldiers were fleeing in retreat to save their life. They were “drunk with fatigue, lame, blind and deaf” and only the fear of death kept them going forward.
2- The second stanza described the most dramatic moment of the poem. The enemies infact began to use lethal gas: many, failing to wear the masks in time, died and the author wrote that as a big “green sea”. The image disturbed profoundly Owen who also when he was writing the poem remembered the image with pain.
3- In the last stanza Owen with a sarcastic tone is aimeing at those who urged young people to join the war. The author infact thought that “ Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is an “old lie” : he had lived the war and he had seen that there’s nothing glorious and momentous in killing brutally someone else.
In Spoon River Anthology the theme of the war is presented in the poem of : Knowlt Hoheimer. he had a criminal life, and when he died he said, as Owen wrote in his poem, that he would never have choosen war again.
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Dear teacher,
This poem really touched me for its brutality and for the strength of the words used: “we cursed through sludge”, “blood-shod”, “flound’ring like a man in fire or lime”, “obscene as cancer”, “the old lie”…
In my opinion the poet chose to use this style in order to express not only his feeling of disapproval towards war but also to transmit how destructing and hurting war is.
In fact Owen called joining the army in the name of your own country an “old lie” because, in the end, there isn’t any feeling of glory or pride in serving the homeland when you are in the middle of bombs, bullets or gas … When you are in hell, there can be only terror and horror.
Also in the poem of Knowlt Hoheimer in Spoon River Anthology we can find the same feelings expressed in Owen’s poem. In facts Knowlt chose to join the army in order to avoid jail but when he died he admitted that it would have been better to choose the prison.
I agree with the two poets that war is just atrocities and I agree with Owen when he accused people to use “the old lie” like an excuse to convince others of the nobility and glory of war, but in the same time I think that if you really believe in your country and you love your country you can feel the duty to protect it so you can proudly join the army.
The only thing that I will never understand is what glory and pride there is in killing people.
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Dear Teacher,
Clearly, the main theme of this poem is War.
I really appreciated the truthful descriptive thechnique chosen by the author, nothing hidden and nothing censored. Everything is told just as it is: Horrible. I think the author wanted to touch especially people who tought of joining the army to help their country or to gain some sort of glory. In my opinion what the author wanted to convey is that war is even more brutal and cruel of what it actually seems. What he wanted to say is that until you don’t see it with your own eyes and you don’t live it on your own skin, you’ll never get how terrible it actually is. Dying in terror and pain is not worth the glory of saving your country, because while you are running from the gases or from any other unhuman danger war exposes you to, you don’t care about honor or patriotic love.
Dying for your homeland is very different from how everybody describes it. There is nothing sweet or decorous about it. Most of the times you die slowly, choking and drowning in gases or in your own blood.
I believe the most touching and strong message that Owen gives us, is in the last few lines, in which he basically tells us that nobody would consider dying for their own homeland so honorable if they had lived that expirience themselves.
I also noticed Owen’s poem has something in common with Knowlt Hoheimer, one of the carachters from the Spoon River Anthology written by Edgar Lee Masters.
He is the bright example of how dying for your patria will just bring you regrets. You might be buried undernith a commemorative statue and be remembered as a war hero, but in exchange you would have lived in terror and pain, faraway from your family, and maybe you would have not even helped to save your country. Terrible, right?
Isn’t it better to live your life as you desire to without having to worry about war and glory and patria?
I think still nowadays there is a huge misconception of what fighting in war really means. Owen wrote a poem that contained current themes, still now, and always will, because, unlickily, war never goes out of style.
War was not invented, it always existed, it is a constituent part of human nature,but I’m sure that somehow it can be contained.
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Dear teacher, dear classmates,
Let’s be honest. Owen’s dreadful account of his experience as a soldier in WWI has sent shivers down our spines. The reason is quite simple: readers cannot help but getting progressively involved in this detailed report of what war truly looks like. As a matter of fact, Owen’s chaotic writing depicts a vivid yet totally uncensored image of one of the bloodiest conflicts ever seen on Earth. In this case, our detachment as contemporary readers can’t prevent us from experiencing bullets ripping through our own cages, as well as gas intoxicating our lungs and leading us to an almost relieving world of darkness and numbness. We could almost say that late War Poet Wilfred Owen willingly chose to turn his readers into the witnesses of a carnage.
As to that, his primary purpose was – and still is – to prevent young men from joining the army in search of glory, as we get to understand from the last four verses of ‘Dolce et Decorum Est’ (‘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’).
According to the late author, there is nothing either befitting or glorious in dying for one’s country. As a matter of fact, the glory young soldiers seek when joining the army is nothing but an evanescent feeling, which can only be experienced after one’s death. Unluckily, most over-enthusiastic cadets – as Owen himself might have been at the time of his enrollment – realise what war actually means when it’s too late to turn back.
Of course, there is a chance of survival, which could consequently lead to some sort of ‘flattering’ military recognition, such as a ‘Purple Heart’ or a plain golden medal. But let’s not forget that the horrors of war cannot help but eternally linger in a soldier’s mind, even long after his ‘farewell to arms’. That’s why most veterans live the rest of their ‘normal’ lives in extreme distress, to the point of even suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), a mental condition preventing them from leading an ordinary existence in a fairly safe environment.
In conclusion, Owen’s poem can surely be connected to many other literary works concerning life as a serving soldier. Despite their differences, which can affect geographical areas, historical times, social conditions, military ranks and so on, most pieces of art related to war often propose remorse as a recurring theme. ‘Spoon River Anthology’ makes no exception, as exemplified by dead character Knowlt Hoheimer, who decided to enroll in the army in order to avoid a sentence to jail. While lying underneath a commemorative marble statue, Knowlt’s soul cannot help but wonder what his ‘sacrifice’ was for.
P.S.: If you wish to know more about PTSD and its effects, I suggest watching 1978 American drama ‘The Deer Hunter’. However, if you’re looking for something less ‘brutal’, you might want to watch ‘Brothers’, a war drama released in 2009 by American director Jim Sheridan.
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Dear teacher,
This poem really touched me. In my opinion it is very difficult to explain the theme of war but the poet, at the age of 24, has moved me. The form of the poem also made me feel as part of the theme, close to these young men.
I share the idea of the poet when he says “dulce et decorum” is “an old lie” because wars are remembered as glorious events, despite the multitude of deaths that they provoked, and I’m sure that nobody would expose himself to the risk of dying, for his country, if they knew what Oliver has seen.
The poet, describing same real scenes of war, in which he has participated personally, also explains the brutality of war which is the worst and the easiest way to resolve a conflict especially among the strongest and the weak ones.
I found that the theme of dying for your homeland is also present in “Knowlt Hoeimer”, one of the poems of Spoon River Anthology. In it at the moment of his death Knowlt said that he would have preferred to stay at home and go to jail rather than joining the army.
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Dear Anna, Martina, Alvise, Giulia, Sara, Anna P, Marco
Thank you for sharing and becoming a community of passionate readers 🙂
I do appreciate
ET
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Dear teacher and fellows,
I think that the message the author wants to deliver is pretty hard not to receive. Considering his almost over-detailed and realistic description of the pains he and his companions suffered, his deep disagreement with the Roman poet’s idea of war seems to be obvious. But just in case the reader doesn’t get it, he explicits it at the end of the poem: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is an old lie, he affirms.
Personally, I couldn’t agree more with the author; suffering all those pains, leaving your hometown and family, losing your friends and even dying is not worth the so called “honour” of doing it for your country. It’s not the country you do it for, it’s someone’s personal/economic/political reasons you are dying for. I guess only few -or none- of the ones who decide whether to start or not a war would actually die for their goals. Reading this poem made me really upset about the injustice of war and the humanity itself and i hope that someone else shares my idea.
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Dear teacher and classmates,
I’ve found this poem very touching for its powerful language, and for its angry and critical tone. Obviously, also the theme is a very strong one: war. War seen like horror, cruelty and, moreover, “An old Lie”. Owen bitterly and ironically refuted the message espoused by many civilian propagandists that war was glorious and it was an honor to die for one’s country.
This poem is divided into three stanzas, and shows different techniques.The allitterations “Bent double like old Beggars”, “Men Marched asleep. Many had lost their Boots But liMped on, Blood-shod”, emphasise the horror of the event, as also do similes like “As under a green sea”. Owen also drew the reader’s attention to the key actions and themes of the poem by his use of repeated, short, single words. For exemple: “All” is repeated twice in line 6 to ensure we are aware that no one escaped, “Gas! Gas!”, used to jolts us into the awareness of the terror of the attack, besides, similarly, the image of the man’s “Face/His hanging face” in line 19-20 is impressed upon our memory by being repeated.
In the first stanza, the poet is speaking in first person, putting himself with his fellow soldiers as they labor through the sludge of the battlefield. He depicts them as old men, as “Beggars” who are “Coughing like hags” and who are “Drunk with fatigue”. The depiction inaugurates the representation of war as three things: identity sripping, individualism forbidding and both body and mind haunting.
Suddenly, war is exactly like that.
The second stanza can be seen as a meaningful visionary part that shows the worst nightmare. Poisonous gas forces the soldiers to put their helmets on. Owen heightens the tension through the depiction of one unlucky soldier who could not complete this task in time, he ends up falling, “Drowning” in gas. This is seen through “The misty panes and the thick green light”, and, as the imagery suggests, the poet sees this in his dreams. These two stanzas really express the representation of war that Owen was trying to impress upon the reader’s mind: soldiers either die in a nightmare,or live with their bodies and minds forever haunted.
In the final stanza Owen paints a vivid picture of the dying young soldier, taking pains to limn just how unnatural it is, “Obscene as cancer”. The dying man is an offense to innocence and purity, his face like a “Devil’s sick of sin”. The poet wanted to say that if you know what the reality of war was like, you would not go about telling people they should enlist. There is utterly no ambiguity in the poem,and thus it is emblematic of poetry critical war.
This poem reminded me of Knowlt Hoeimer, a character of Spoon River Anthoogy. In fact, he was a criminal who, in order to avoid prison, chose to join the army. But that was a terrible decision of which he regrets, even after his death. Knowlt makes us understand that he would have done better to assume his own responsability and to accept the consequences instead of live war atrocities.
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Dear teacher,
I was really shocked by the very strong and brutal expressions used by the author. This poem focuses on a theme of actuality or rather: war.
In my opinion, the message that the author wants to send is very clear. He denounced the horror of war and the hypocrisy and ignorance of patriotism.
We can catch this idea, reading the last two lines of the poem, where the author says :” The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.”
With a sarcastic tone he describes his experience like a futile battle.
The war unleash another war. What are the reasons that triggered it?
It is important to point out that many soldiers often fight for reasons that go beyond the honor of the homeland.
Nowadays, these reasons may also be religious, economic, political, also personal.
I agree with the author, because I think that war goes beyond the apparent reasons of glorious act.
It is a violent act and, as such, does not give value to any country, if not to take away your freedom and to defend your ideas and principles through violence. So it can not be a sweet and decorum act.
Nowadays, war is more technological than once that they were fighting in the field.
This causes innocent victims, anger, terror and destruction; a cycle that will never end and will generate only hatred and desire for revenge in future generations.
War in the end does not satisfy anyone, just who at that time wants to retain the power.
Often who decides to start a war makes it for a purpose that is not shared by the population. This brings only disappointment and suffering.
The theme of the “war” is also presented by one of the poem of Spoon River Anthology: Knowlt Hoeimer.
Knowlt was a soldier, who decided to join the army just in order to escape from the prison.
At the moment of his death he regrets, and he says that it would have been better to stay home and go to the county jail.
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