Subversion of pro-war sentiment in Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est' Verity Theophanous College

In Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen uses a variety of literary devices to highlight the monstrous disjuncture between the gruesome reality of the battlefield and the romanticised image of war that circulated through poetry, newspapers, and magazines at the start of the World War I. Owen's manipulation of traditional rhyming forms and metre, combined with his use of irony, figurative language and vivid sensory description help to establish the piece as a powerful anti-recruitment poem. The poem is also representative of a collective shift in values, as a generation shocked by the horrors of the First World War became disenchanted with pro-war romanticism.

Owen creates a strong sense of dissonance by contrasting the form of the poem with its content. Though he makes subtle alterations to the poetic trend, Owen makes use of traditional rhyming patterns and conforms to a loose iambic pentameter, echoing the form of a French Ballade. As the imagery becomes increasingly grotesque the stanzas deviate from these conventions, highlighting the gruesome reality of war. For example, to describe the 'guttering, choking, drowning' soldier plunging towards him, Owen isolates the event from the preceding verse, creating a new stanza that...