Creative Modern Interpretive: Wilfred Owen - Essay Example

DULCE ET DECORUM EST1 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through desert,  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs  And towards our distant rest began to trudge.  Men marched asleep. Many had lost their minds  But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;  Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, blasting mortar that dropped behind.IEDs!7 IEDs! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling,  Fitting the military helmets just in time;  But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,  And floundring like a man in fire or lime . . .

  Dim, through the sand blast and thick dust light,  As under a tornado, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace  Behind the jeep that we flung him in,  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,  His hanging face, like a devils 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 desiring for some desperate glory,  The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est  Pro patria mori.

8 October 2007 - March, 2008732AnalysisWhen rewriting Wilfred Owne’s Ducle et Decorum for the experiences American soldiers experienced and continue to experience in the Iraq War, as well as the Afghanistan conflict, it was noted that in many degrees while the linguistic and technological elements have changed since World War I in great degree the wartime experience has remained the same. Dulce et Decorum translates to ‘It is sweet and right,’ an ironic reference to the reality and of the tragic occurrences of World War I.

While it’s not the place of this analysis to argue along strictly political lines, one could make a convincing argument that this line is a similar justification used in the wars in the Middle East. Although it’s not entirely clear what the ‘sweet’ refers to one could rightly attribute it to the ‘sweet’ revenge that many Americans felt justified the countries attack on these regions for the advances made by Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks made on the World Trade Center. The ‘right’ portion of the title refers to the belief that American attacks are justified on the grounds of moral reasons – weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, stopping the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In these regards, the poem functions to bring the reader’s attention not to these abstract justifications, but to the bitter realities of armed conflict. At the beginning of the poem the soldiers are marching along. While Owen’s poem placed them in sludge – seemingly a reference to muddy ground – this rewrite alters the soldiers’ location to the desert. As they continue marching they continue marching while the ‘haunting flares’ are set off in the background. Owen’s poem notes that ‘men marched asleep; many had lost their boots’.

In this version, boots is changed to ‘minds’ to emphasize that while the military establishment can now ensure soldiers’ boots remain intact, they still cannot ensure that their minds and sanity remain in touch with reality. This is a reference to the nature of combat and to the current cultural concern with post-traumatic stress disorder, as noted in the film the Hurt Locker and many media accounts of soldiers returning home and having difficulty adjusting to civilian life. The final line of the first stanza changes Owen reference to ‘five-nines’ a type of military bomb used in World War I to ‘mortar’ as this is keeping with the contemporary Middle East conflict.

Similarly in the first line of the second stanza the Owen’s reference to gas is altered to ‘IEDs’ that is an improvised explosive device. These are roadside bombs that are utilized by the Taliban in attacks on American soldiers. They accounted for nearly 40% of the American deaths in Iraq and are similarly a major concern in Afghanistan. By nature their unpredictability is very similar to gas in World War I. Following this a tacit metaphor is drawn between gas in World War I and IED’s in the contemporary conflict.

While direct reference to the gas was altered to reflect the IED’s and outdated language ‘desiring’ replaced ‘ardent’, the majority of Owen’s imagery remained intact. The similarities in the poem’s represent that while technology has changed in the last century, the underlining horror of war has remained the same.