Just realized I totally posted on the wrong poem....again. It'd be nice if I could get my life together, but that'd be too much to ask for, right?
So seeing as I signed up to write about Dulce et Decorum est and probably confused everyone because we're not doing Prufrock until after the break...
So I translated Dulce et Decorum Est and what I got was "Sweet and fitting it is."And at first that struck me as super odd, because the poem is about these poor soldiers, dirty and dying. What is sweet and fitting about that? In any sense at all? And then I got to the end and saw that I had another thing to translate. "Ducle et Decorum est pro patria mori" means "sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country."He calls it a lie. I realized that he was trying to use it as anti-propaganda. He says that everyone is telling the children stories of the war and calling for more war, calling these people heroes and saying that they got to die in these glorious ways.
But it did not sound like anyone was dying in any sort of wonderful, glorifying way. These men are exhausted and headed home after a fight, when war hits them yet again in the form of gas bombs or something along those lines. And then this soldier watches his comrade die and can't get the image out of his head. Owen wrote this poem to try and tell people that they have not seen the war, so they don't actually know what war is like. They have not been on the battlefields, watching men with not enough supplies and struggling to stay alive. They have not seen the wounded and the dying. And yet they keep trying to encourage people that war was a good thing and that they should give up their lives for the sake of the war.
It's true; every word of this poem is true. War is not this glorious thing and it certainly is not the only answer to problems. But at the same time, its not so easy as to just tell people not to call for war. Just because your country doesn't call for war doesn't mean another country is just going to say "well, you're right, let's just go get some froyo and call it a compromise." We glorify these stories because we want these men to be remembered as these glorious people. Even if they died alone on a battlefield, not because they saved someone from a bomb or because they were even part of the fighting at all, they still put themselves out on that field to die for their country. I know he's saying its not sweet and fitting to die for your country, but I didn't think that was the point of the saying. Its the fact that these men have so much love for their country that they are willing to die is so sweet and fitting. So, while I entirely agree that the call for war is never the answer, I disagree that we shouldn't glorify these men. It is entirely awful that they have to die like that, but it is still beautiful that they are willing to try for their country like that.
But maybe thats just me. Alright, back to this god forsaken paper again. Sorry for the confusion. See ya'll tomorrow!
To be honest I didn't even really think to translate the title until after I read it, and I was confused as well. Looking at it from the anti-propaganda perspective that you talked about, it definitely makes sense, almost like a "you weren't there, so you don't know what it's like." The definition of reality is brought into question, because there are all these people that are willing to boost war efforts and say how glorious it is to fight for your country, but seeing as the speaker is haunted by a gas-attack, his reality was like the other men that actually fight the battles. Civilians and the soldiers live in two completely separate realities, and the meaning of war changes greatly between these two types of people.
ReplyDeleteJacqueline,
ReplyDeleteI also translated both of the latin phrases and I agree with your reading of the poem. At first I did not get the poem based on the title but those last two lines completely changed my reading of the poem. I did a little research on Owen because I did not know anything about him and found out that while he was serving in WWI he was hit my a mortar and thrown into the air, but he survived and was later diagnosed with shell shock. I could only imagine that all of the images though out the poem were puled from real life experience that he was subjected to witness. I also like your reading of the poem that is sweat and fitting that the men are wiling to die for their country, it shows a patriotism bar none that was very prevalent during the time period he wrote the poem.
Daniel Pietaro
In "Dulce et Decorum Est" Owen is struggling with a serious issue, he is trying to get the country to realize people are dying. Owen brings the image of dying soldiers, and the torment of witnessing men he knows scramble and some die from a gas shell attack, and worst of all he cannot do anything about it. He bitterly addresses the people at home for urging the youth to fight for glory and honor. He questions how they can continue to call for war if it causes so much agony, and I think it is this agony that make death and war to the speaker not glorious or honorable. To us sitting away for the action we have a completely different perspective, and it is interesting to see how a solider would view war. We see them doing something brave and valiant, but they may not feel that way at all.
ReplyDeleteAs it said in one of the footnotes, this poem to to address Jessie Pope who published patriotic poems trying to convince young men to enlist during WWI. I did a little bit of research on her as well - she was a writer and a journalist and her views opposed the soldier-poets who were directly involved in combat during the war. I agree with you that in this poem Owen to negate the glorified images of war that young men saw in propaganda and read in the works of people like Jessie Pope. Owen recalls images from his own experiences to make enhance his argument - the one of the soldier suffering and dying after breathing in poisonous gas that was used during the war was particularly vivid and it was obviously something he could not let go of after he was removed from the war. Some of the images reminded me of All Quiet on the Western front, which is a book I read in high school. I feel like the goal of both of these works was the same - to give a true account of what it's actually like to be a soldier in the harsh conditions of WWI.
ReplyDeleteHey Jackie,
ReplyDeleteCongrats on posting for the right poem, im impressed. Anyways I had a similar experience while reading this poem, but I have to admit I was rather confused throughout. The last thing I did, which I know now should've been the first, was to translate the title. I think it is necessary to look at this poem through an anti-propganda perspective because it is the only way to gain the perspective the people had during this time. Owen is writing on a serious problem, the imagery he described was incredibly realistic. The reason I liked this poem so much is because Owen was totally real throughout. He made me realize that all the propaganda posters were for a good cause, but they left out all the negatives of the war. I think it was commendable that Owen threw his perspective out to counteract the media, because he knew the bad that came along with fighting for a good cause.
Hey Jackie,
ReplyDeleteCongrats on posting for the right poem, im impressed. Anyways I had a similar experience while reading this poem, but I have to admit I was rather confused throughout. The last thing I did, which I know now should've been the first, was to translate the title. I think it is necessary to look at this poem through an anti-propganda perspective because it is the only way to gain the perspective the people had during this time. Owen is writing on a serious problem, the imagery he described was incredibly realistic. The reason I liked this poem so much is because Owen was totally real throughout. He made me realize that all the propaganda posters were for a good cause, but they left out all the negatives of the war. I think it was commendable that Owen threw his perspective out to counteract the media, because he knew the bad that came along with fighting for a good cause.
To me, this poem is a backlash against all the of the people who are publishing war propaganda enticing men to enlist. There was not anything glorious about WWI. The British casualties far exceeded any other loss of life. In the Norton, Ducle Et Decorum Est translates as "It is sweet and meet to die for one's country" In the OED, 'meet' is defined as a meeting, or an appointment. So you could aptly read the title as, It is sweet to schedule an appointment to die for your country.. For Owen it seems like there is little or no hope in returning from this war once you enlist. And if by some miracle, you do return the likelihood of you every being the same is non existent. As many people feared, another war would follow WWI so I think Owen is just trying to do his best to dismiss the people on the home front advocating for war. The true fact of war is that it is fought on two different fronts. The home front & the front lines. The number of total civilian casualties on the home front, are what the soldiers on the front lines lost every day. For any country, the statistics are overwhelming and there isn't anything sweet about that.
ReplyDeleteI read through this poem a couple times and each time I felt just as sickened as the first. The imagery in this poem is so vile, raw, and brutally honest that it is hard to swallow. I agree with you, Jacqueline, that this poem offers up a more true account of what war is really like. The degree to which it does not glorify war is so strong that it seems to purposefully be extra harsh to counter the persuasive propaganda at the time to join the war movement. The soldiers are not portrayed as strong, brave, strapping young men like many of the WWI posters depict. Rather, they are exhausted, pitiful, ghosts of men struggling to survive.
ReplyDeleteThe end of the poem is both a call to action and a pinpoint of blame:
"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,"
It is society's fault that we have wrongly glorified war and told these men that it was a honorable, wonderful thing to go fight. Children are easily swayed and often grow up wanting to please. It is almost unfair to take advantage of them, convincing them that they should go to war and fight bravely when realistically, most of them will not return. They will die painful deaths. Owen seems to urge society to not lie to their children - to not falsely paint this picture of glory in war when it is violent and sad.
I love that this poem shows the horrors of war--and the vivid descriptions of the gas, and the horror is morbidly fascinating. I can't imagine the reaction of the people who read this poem at the time (particularly when Owen describes the eyes and tongue of the poor solider who does not get his mask on in time). I particularly like (I feel like that is the wrong word) the line "Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!" It captures the panic of the incoming gas, but also a sort of camaraderie between the men. However, it is not the noble camaraderie of brothers in arms, but brothers in horror together.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, however, every one is an individual on this battlefield. Each man has to get the gas mask on, and if he doesn't, he ends up with the gas burning his skin and corrupting his lungs. This man in the poem becomes a part of the horror--he is a disgusting scene that revisits the men each night as they sleep. This poem effectively conveys the PTSD that many of the soldiers came home with.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" was a traditional saying often written on the gravestones of soldiers who had died in war. It's obviously a sentiment divorced from reality, but that was (and is) a traditional perspective on war. The good thing about World Wars 1 and 2 (if anything can be said to be good about them) was that they wakened many civilians' eyes to the horrors of war. The scope and intensity was such that had never been seen before, but the ugly, disgusting realities had always been there. It's just that only soldiers could see it.
ReplyDeleteWorld War 1 was a horrible, horrible war - completely unnecessary and preventable. It was a bunch of tangled alliances all feeling they had to back each other up. Millions of people died for a mistake. Kind of like the "blunder" in "Charge of the Light Brigade." And it led directly to World War 2, which was even worse. What makes "dulce et decorum est..." particularly despicable is the fact that the soldiers were dying over nothing. I think Owen's poem was written not simply to say that war is hell, but also that the purposes and reasons for war are often not noble. The pointlessness of WW1 was partly what made Owen oppose it (besides the fact that he got blown up in it, and later died right at the end.)