Dulce et decorum est
...o sludge which is the start of his heavy use of similes and also his major onomatopoeic usage. I think ‘sludge’ is a great word to use in this circumstance as it makes you feel the effort that the soldiers would have had to put in with every step through the thick mud. In the fourth line the author again uses a strange phrase when he writes;” Drunk with fatigue “ I had to think about what the line was suppose to mean for a while but I think it means that the soldiers were so tired they weren’t aware of there surroundings and then Owen finishes the first stanza with a eerie, sinister feel with the line ;” deaf even to the hoots of gas-shells dropping gently behind”. To me that line conjures the image of the men marching along half asleep unaware of the potentially deadly danger that lurks behind them. The second stanza starts of with the men realising the gas attack and in the opening line the author uses another unusual choice of words;” an ecstasy of fumbling” I think this line is highly effective at portraying a detailed image when you think about what ecstasy actually means. The word literally means a raised awareness and when you think about it that way you can picture the men slowly trudging along and then they hear the gas shout and suddenly become alert and struggle to find their masks. The mood of the poem then changes with;” But someone was still yelling out and stumbling …” and you can just imagine the helpless man vainly trying to save himself in the waves of green gas that Owen describes as a ‘sea’. Owen then changes his approach to describing the nightmares that still haunt him about the dying man stretching out to him and he uses the word guttering which shows the mans fight for life. In the third and final stanza the author for the first time uses the word ‘you’ which makes you think about the horrors of war and what it would be like for you to be there yourself and experience the suffering that so many millions of young men went through. The lines that most impressed me were;” If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” in these lines Owen has used punctuation so as you are reading you can feel the jerks and the jolts of the blood spilling from the poor mans lungs . The poem then finishes of with its most contr...