Discuss how Owen uses imagery in ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ to illustrate his antiwar message.
Wilfred Owen uses imagery in ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ to illustrate his antiwar message by giving the intended audience an image to think about the effects of war and how it can hurt many people like the soldiers. In the line ‘Drunk with fatigue’ it conveys a mental imagery on the soldiers as being tired and suffering from fatigue constantly. Another example of this mental antiwar imagery is ‘Gas! GAS! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling’ gives us an image of young men who are stumbling to fight for their lives as they are afraid of dying and afraid of what is to come.
How does ‘Futility’ reflect the changing mood of the soldiers towards that which they are experiencing?
Futility means pointlessness or uselessness. Futility reflects the changing mood of the soldiers because they witness each soldier being killed and the mourning of death. The soldiers experience a good persona when they are enlisted for the war as they are seen as heroic and that they are noble for serving their country but then their personas decrease as they realise that its more difficult
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To start in strange meeting, the soldier is afraid yet escaped the battle. The deaths haunt him of his fellow soldiers. The ending quote says the nature of war “I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned. Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. Let us sleep now...” In Futility this is represented by this quote ‘Was it for this clay grew tall? – O what made fatuous sunbeams toil. To break earth’s sleep at all.’ As it is saying how this had a tragic event in earth as the nature of war can do that. Finally, Insensibility shows how the men dying are relieving their memories in this quote ‘Happy are men who yet before they are killed. Can let their veins run