Context: In stanza one Owen describes the

Context:
soldiers’ poor health
In the opening line of the poem, Owen
describes the physical appearance of
the soldiers.

Quote:
Quote:
“Bent double, like beggars under sacks”
“coughing like hags”

Context: Context: Owen describes how every soldier

In stanza one the soldiers are physically and is physically affected by the war and are
mentally exhausted exhausted

Quote: Quote:
“Men marched asleep.” “All went lame; all blind; Drunk with
fatigue; deaf even to the hoots…”
Context: One soldier struggles to put on his
Context: In stanza two there is a sudden gas
gas mask
attack

Quote:
Quote:
“GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!”
“An ecstasy of fumbling”
Context: During the gas attack Owen sees
Context: One soldier is gasping for breath as the soldier through his gas mask. The
he breathes in the gas. His lungs are burning. soldier is drowning in his own blood and
dying

Quote: Quote:
“floundering like a man in fire or lime” “As under a green sea, I saw him
drowning.”
 Context: Owen is haunted by the scene. He Context: Owen talks to the reader and tells
feels he can’t help this soldier who is us how he is haunted by the horrific scenes
desperate for help. of men dying. He asks the reader to imagine
walking behind the wagon like a funeral
procession.

Quote: Quote:
“In all my dreams before my helpless sight, “If in some smothering dreams, you
He plunges at me, guttering, choking,
drowning”
too could pace…”
Context:
Context: Owen describes the physical pain
Owen refers to where they put the dead
the soldiers were in after being exposed to
soldiers.
gas. He describes the way the gas burns
your skin.

Quote:
“watch the white eyes writhing in his
face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of
Quote:
sin.”
“the wagon that we flung him in”

Context: Context: Owen addresses the reader and

He describes how even Satan (Devil) would tells them that if you could see the horrific
be disgusted by this sight. sights that he did, you would not tell these
young men how great it is to fight for your
country.

Quote:
Quote: “My friend, you would not tell with
“Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud” such high zest...”

How to use your study cards:

Context: Owen ends the poem with a
damning criticism of war and those people  Stick the Quote to one side of a card.
who support it. He makes Stick the matching Evaluation on the
it clear that anyone who knew reverse.
the truth of war could not view it  Write the context for each quote
as war as an act of heroic patriotism. (where in the poem the quote comes
from & what is being described)
 Test yourself or get family/friends to
Quote: test you on remembering each quote
“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est and how to evaluate it.
Pro patria mori.”
 Evaluation Evaluation
 Simile: comparing soldiers to old
beggars.  Simile: comparing the soldiers’
 Gives picture of the soldiers as coughing to hags.
shabby and dirty with blood and  Hag: an old, ugly woman or
mud. witch.
 Soldiers are bent over with the  Suggests the soldiers are in very
weight of their backpacks, just as poor health and have been aged by
beggars are crippled by old age. war.

Evaluation
 Short, blunt sentence: Evaluation
emphasises the numbness of the
soldiers.  Repetition or ‘All’: emphasises
 Metaphorical: men are not that no soldier escaped the
actually asleep but conveys their sufferings of war – every one was
total exhaustion -they are so tried injured in some way.
they can’t think.  List using semi-colons:
 The three strong beats: imitate emphasises the physical disabilities
the sound of the soldiers’ heavy inflicted on the soldiers: lame,
marching footsteps (left, right, left) blind, exhausted, deaf

Evaluation Evaluation
 Capital letters and exclamation  Oxymoron: ‘ecstasy’ means a state
marks: suggest the words were shouted of extreme pleasure/happiness.
in panic and fear. ‘Fumbling’ means stumbling and
 The sudden change in struggling. The contradiction helps
mood/atmosphere compared to first convey the confusion and heightened
stanza helps convey the suddenness of emotions of the soldiers.
the attack on the soldiers.  ‘Fumbling’ shows their fear is
 Short exclamatory statements: possibly causing their hands to sweat
convey the soldiers’ hurry to get masks and shake, stopping them putting on
on quickly. their masks easily.

Evaluation Evaluation
 ‘Floundering’: means to struggle  Simile: compares dying in the gas
or thrash about in water. Helps us to drowning.
 Extended metaphor: there are
picture the man flailing about in
several words which continue this
pain. The word also introduces the idea:
extended metaphor. ‘floundering’ ‘thick green light’ ‘green
 Simile: comparing the man sea’ ‘drowning’ ‘plunges’ ‘choking’
caught by the gas to a man burning ‘drowning’
alive. Conveys the horrific effect of  All these words convey how horrifying
the gas, and the terrible pain of the the man’s death in the gas was: he
soldier. couldn’t breath and was flailing about
wildly.
 Evaluation
 Tells us the image has haunted the Evaluation
poet ever since in his nightmares.  ‘Smothering’: suggests the poet
 ‘all’ suggests he dreams of nothing can’t breathe when having the
else. nightmares and that they totally
 ‘plunges at me, guttering, choking, occupy his sleep all the time.
drowning’ – all the verbs have switched  ‘you too’: the poet now
to the present tense which makes it addresses the reader directly,
seem like it is happening right now. This asking us to imagine the horrible
helps us imagine what it is like to have image ourselves.
the nightmare.

Evaluation
 Alliteration: draws attention to
Evaluation
the horrible image of the dying
 Word choice – ‘flung’: shows a
soldier’s eyes rolling about in pain.
lack of emotion, care or respect for
The poet had to walk behind
the body.
looking into those eyes.
 Suggests that death was such a
 Repetition of ‘face’: shows that
common event that the other
the image the poet most
soldiers had become used to it,
remembers in the dying soldier’s
desensitised to it.
face. Stuck in his memory.
 Simile: compares the man’s face
to the twisted and grotesque face
of the devil.
Evaluation
 Simile: the blood in the dying Evaluation
soldier’s mouth is as terrible and awful  Direct address to the reader:
as cancer. Owen introduces the final message
 Simile: the blood tasted as sharp and of his poem by talking straight to
bitter as sick. the reader.
 The two similes together emphasise  Owen is saying that if you had
the horror of the man’s internal injuries seen the dying soldier first hand,
as his lungs, burnt away by the gas, you would not praise war so
begin to rot and bleed, choking the enthusiastically.
soldier.

Evaluation
 ‘’Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria
Mori’: “It is sweet and fitting to die for
your country.”
 This motto was commonly used to
encourage people to sign up and fight
for their country. Owen has tried to
show, through his graphic depiction of
the gas attack, that this is a lie. War is
horrific and terrible and should not be
glorified.