What are the types of conflict in "Dulce Et Decorum Est"?
The main conflict in this World War I poem is between what people have been taught about war and the reality of what war is. As the Latin title indicates, people learn that war is "sweet and fitting" to fight, but the poem's graphic imagery shows that, in reality, war is horrible and that there is nothing fitting about it. The point of the poem is didactic: the narrator desperately wants to sweep away people's false notions that war is heroic and ennobling.
For example, the poem opens by showing the soldiers as weak and exhausted. They are anything but heroic. They are,
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags . . .
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It is very interesting to examine the way that conflict is presented in this excellent poem based on the horrors of World War I. I would argue that there are three different kinds of conflict in this poem. Let us first start off with the physical conflict that being in a war involves. The soldiers that are limping away from the "haunting flares" of the battlefield and are slowly making their way towards the "distant rest" that awaits them. However, even though they are retreating they are not safe, as the gas attack shows. This physical conflict is therefore perhaps the most important type of conflict that there is.
However, at the same time, let us not be blind to the way that the speaker himself is subject to an emotional conflict, as the images of what he experienced as a soldier haunt him every single night:
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
The way in which the speaker cannot escape this terrible images shows the emotional conflict that he suffers as he tries to live his life but is unable to move on from this experience. This is a conflict that psychologically, the speaker pushes on to his audience at the end of the poem. Note how this is reinforced by the change of tense, as suddenly the speaker addresses us by saying "If you...", involving us in the horror and tragedy of war and causing us to question our beliefs about war and conflict. This is not a poem to be read and enjoyed from the comfort of our armchairs. We are placed in a position of psychological conflict too.
What are three types of conflicts in the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est"? Why are they effective?
Here are some possible ideas to get you started. I would consider using the opening lines to show the environmental conflict-
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
As many of the soldiers died due to the conditions rather than as a result of direct combat this is an important point.
To signify the physical conflict I would use the gas attack and the soldiers’ panicked response-
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
For the psychological conflict I would refer to the challenge of the gas attack and the trauma of seeing his colleague die, and the image returning to the narrator’s dreams-
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Finally I would use the emotion of Owen’s challenge to Jessie Pope and the other propagandists which concludes the poem-
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.