1. Analysis of techniques in Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen

2. Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Similes:
Soldiers crippled – overcome by experiences in war. They’re like beggars, like hags – not the healthy young men they were when they left. These are images of the deformity that we might be able to understand.
Metaphor– the flares (death) are ‘haunting’ the soldiers who live in fear of death, can’t escape it.
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.
Metaphor – two meanings. The battle’s ending and they’re heading back to camp – distant rest could also refer to death.
Metaphor – men are so exhausted it is like they are barely aware of their surroundings.
Metaphor – the men are so tired and overwhelmed by war it is like they are drunk – can’t see, can’t walk properly.
The war is worn out, so are the soldiers who are part of it

3. Use of short exclamations (imperatives) which draw us into the frenzied action immediately.
Present participles – ‘ing’ verbs – changes to using these which creates a sense of immediacy
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floundering 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
Simile: compares the way he is flailing to that of a man burning alive. (Connotations of Hell?)
Extended Metaphor: describes the man choking to death- unable to breathe, he falls about. In next stanza the narrator describes having flashbacks to the death of his comrade highlighting how the impact of war lasts over many years and across generations
Simile: compares gas covered landscape seen through the gas mask to a sea – shows the extent of the gas, how thick it was. Links to image of drowning (which is a metaphor, but also literal in a sense.)
These words continue the image introduced in previous stanza of man flailing trying desperately to breathe.

4. Directly addresses reader. ‘Pace behind’ suggests funeral procession
Directly addresses reader. ‘Pace behind’ suggests funeral procession. Owen directly addresses the reader, forcing them, to imagine the horror of watching the young soldier dying in agony.
Simile - Imagine that the Devil, who lives for sin, is sick of it? Shows disillusionment.
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.
Simile – contrast in these similes are to illness, pain, suffering - highlights how youth
and innocence are destroyed by war
Owen ends the poem with a
damning criticism of war and
those who support it. He makes it clear that anyone who knew the truth of war could not view it as war as an act of heroic patriotism. He employs an ironic tone here to create an anti-war feeling.
Owen ends the poem with a direct address to the reader,
asking them to reconsider the truth of patriotic tales of war.