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The Senseless Violence of War

“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is an antiwar poem, and as such it offers powerful testimony about the senseless violence of war. Owen evokes the senselessness of this violence in part by dropping the reader into the middle of the action. The poem immediately draws us into a company of soldiers who are already exhausted and dejected as they trudge through the muck of a war field. Their bodies and spirits have suffered greatly, leaving them “knock-kneed” and “drunk with fatigue” (lines 2 and 7). And then, seemingly from out of nowhere, a canister of poison gas lands nearby, causing the scene to erupt into a flurry of confusion (lines 9–14):

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.

The sheer number of -ing words in this passage helps communicate the immediate sense of panic among the soldiers. They struggle out of their exhaustion and into “an ecstasy of fumbling / Fitting the clumsy helmets”—all the while “yelling,” “stumbling,” “flound’ring,” and even “drowning.” By placing his audience within this scene of chaos and confusion, the speaker powerfully communicates the sheer senselessness of war.

The Haunting Power of Trauma

The speaker’s experience on the front lines of war has clearly left him traumatized. In particular, he is haunted by the memory of a soldier in his unit who died in a poison gas attack. The speaker recounts this traumatic experience in the second stanza, where he describes a surreal scene in which the dying soldier appeared to be “drowning” in “a green sea” of gas (line 14). However, it isn’t until the extremely short third stanza that it becomes clear just how deeply this surreal image has scarred the speaker (lines 15–16):

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

This two-line stanza represents a crux in the poem, as the speaker’s attention shifts from the past to the present. The memory of the dying soldier has never stopped haunting him, and as such this memory remains a haunting presence in his life. The way this past memory remains ever-present for the speaker indicates that he suffers from what at the time was called “shell shock,” but which is now known as PTSD, or “post-traumatic stress disorder.” It is precisely this condition that leads the speaker to address his contemporaries in the present moment, calling on them to recognize the traumatizing horrors of war.

The Misplaced Ideal of Glory in War

Though principally concerned with demonstrating the horrors and traumatic effects of war, the speaker also addresses a broader cultural tendency to view war through the idealizing lens of glory. This theme arises in the poem’s final stanza, where the speaker addresses those of his contemporaries who continue to peddle the old-fashioned idea that war confers glory on the self-sacrificing soldier. These people have clearly never witnessed just how inglorious war can be. If they had, then they would know better than to “tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” (lines 25–28). The “old Lie” referenced here comes from the Roman poet Horace, who once wrote in an ode, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” However, given the cascade of violent imagery the speaker has already presented, the phrase “sweet and fitting” strikes the ear with devastating irony. Clearly, then, there is no glory to be had in dying on the battlefield—neither for the individual soldier, nor for the country in whose name the soldier is fighting. Glory is a misplaced ideal.

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