Wilfred Owens Dulce Et Decorum Est and Tim OBriens The things they Carried - Essay Example

The compare and contrast of the two works is interestingly challenging as both pieces of writings are very different forms of literature as one is prose while other is poetry. Nonetheless when consequent analysis is carried out a lot of similarities are found between the two works instead of differences. The very first of these similarities is the apparent similarity in the thematic obsession of both the pieces of literature which is the astonishing difference between the irony of patriotism and the terrors of wars.

In both World War I and the Vietnam War idealistic youngsters were deceived by the government’s attempt to glorify the concept of war and to prove that dying for one’s country is an honorable task. Nevertheless, all of these young people were not prepared for the horrors of war which include death, torture and chaos. The loaded symbolism of the titles of both the works is also a similarity of these works. Dulce et Decorum est was often heard off in the First World War, this phrase declares the nobleness and sweetness of dying for ones country, so explicitly Owens’s poem is proclaiming the sweetness of death for ones country.

However, irony and sarcasm are the literary devices utilised here as the poem clearly presents how there is absolutely nothing sweet or correct about war in its place, is a horrid and terror stricken time for both the civilians and the participants of war. Owen uses imagery to intensely expose this bleak reality of war to his readers. In just the beginning of his poem he utilizes imagery at the moment when he asks the readers to envisage the soldiers of war “Bent double, like old beggars …” (Owen, 1), which enables the reader to comprehend that because of the hardships of war the soldiers become analogous to old beggars who are forced to bend double due to old age and poverty.

The fantasy of the civilians that soldiers are honored when they die at war is unpleasantly shattered when in line 18 an image of the dead man who is thrown into a wagon to let him die, should make the reader apprehend that time does not honor the dead men from wars fittingly. All this verification against wars must surely lessen the nobility and honor associated with it. ‘Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots but limped on, blood-shod’ (Owen, 5-6) This is a verse from Owen’s poem; it depicts not only an explicit similarity between his work and O’