It
Is Not Sweet and Proper to Die for One’s Country
In 23 B.C., Quintus Horatius Flaccus—a soldier, rhetorician,
poet, and public notary more commonly known as Horace—wrote an ode saying, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”
or “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.” 1,940 years after Horace
wrote the ode, in 1917 A.D., one particular English soldier, Wilfred Owen, knew
this saying, but did not think it could apply to World War I. Owen’s experience
and Horace’s experience in wartime differed greatly—Owen had a gun, helmet,
bombs, and gasses to use in war while Horace used an armored tunic, helmet,
shield, and sword. The different fighting styles between the Romans and Allied
Forces of World War I alone means that the saying by Horace may not have been
completely wrong, but only right for his time. However, while Owen believed in
the valor of dying for one’s country, he thought it not at all sweet and
proper. In the poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” he showed his disagreement with
Horace by exactly describing trench warfare of the Great War by talking about
how the war felt, looked, and sounded.
First, Owen showed how it felt to march, fight, and die
in the trenches. For instance, “sludge” covered the ground, lit by flares.
Although Owen does not describe the sludge, one can take from the context of
the Great War that it would not be factory run-off, but instead mud and blood,
with some spent shells, live ammunition, and soldiers’ possessions, such as
photographs, mixed together. Owen describes how they sloshed through the
sludge: “bent double, like old beggars under sacks/ knock-kneed...” The
soldiers also became blind and deaf, as large explosions cause the ears to
bleed and the eyes to go temporarily blind.
Even the noise of war can be blocked out of a person’s perception,
resulting in a type of deafness. Essentially, the men Owen fought with turned
into a blind, deaf, bloody-footed army that certainly veered from sweetness and
propriety.
In his poem, Owen also described what the effects of
chlorine gas looked like. This greenish gas stoppable with activated charcoal,
which many gas masks had. Owen describes a chlorine gas attack thus: “An
ecstasy of fumbling/ fitting the clumsy helmets just in time /
...someone...floundering like a man in fire or lime.-- /...dim, through the
misty panes and thick green light /...I saw him drowning /...guttering,
choking, drowning.” Then the man’s eyes would “writhe [in] his hanging face”
and blood would come “gargling” up from his lungs. When the gas hits the lungs
and meets the watery mucosa, it forms an excess of hydrochloric acid, which
corrodes the lungs and leads to choking on blood and other fluids. Owen’s
description indicates that he held dying of chlorine gas inhalation a
lamentable way to die.
The trenches, according to Owen, also had certain sounds,
which he describes and implies. For instance, while the men walked, they made
noises: “[coughed] like hags... / yelling out...guttering, choking...” They
also spoke, sometimes by swearing, but most famously in this poem “GAS! Gas!
Quick, boys!” Through his descriptions, Owen implied other sounds, such as
squelching through sludge. In addition, when the soldiers were “fitting the
clumsy helmets,” the helmets clanked and rattled and went “snap” when the chin
straps tightened. The last sound occurred with detonating shells, followed by
the swearing and yelling. While Horace though very highly of such actions, Owen
thought quite the worst experience a man can have.
When Horace wrote his ode in 23 B.C., he had quite a
different experience in war than Owen had in 1917 A.D. While Horace said, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”
Owen tended to agree more with Dulce et
decorum non est pro patria mori.
Owen particularly used the conditions in the trenches, the shells, and the
effects of chlorine gas as evidence. At the end of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen
drove his point home by writing, “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 ardent for some desperate
glory, / the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / pro patria mori.”
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