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dulce et decorum
Owen describes an incident of exhausted soldiers trudging through the mud of the battlefield. They are leaving the front line in order to rest for a few days in a safer place. However, the group is attacked by mustard gas. This is a substance used in chemical warfare. It reacts with water in the lungs to form a corrosive chemical which destroys the lungs. One soldier is too late in putting on his mask. Owen describes the symptoms shown by this man as the poison slowly kills him. Owen wants us to be shocked at the reality that he is presenting. He is not afraid to show his own feelings, through the use of emotive words such as “cursed”, “obscene”, “bitter”, “vile”. In the line “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” he again contrasts reality with the idealistic way in which war has been presented, when soldiers are pictured as singing while marching proudly to their glorious deaths. Owen uses four main groups of imagery that run throughout the poem: A – tiredness, sleep, dreams, a nightmare world: “Men marched asleep”, “Drunk with fatigue”, “In all my dreams”, “If in some smothering dreams”, Owen apparently suffered from nightmares, perhaps as a result of shell-shock. B – the sea and drowning: “Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.” “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”, “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. C – loss of coordination: “Bent double”, “...
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