Themes: The Limits of Patriotism

In Wilfred Owen’s time, most English schoolboys learned that war was glorious, as exemplified in the Latin phrase that gives the poem its title: “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori,” a quotation from the Roman poet Horace which means that to die for one’s country is sweet and fitting. Owen’s imagery makes clear that war is anything but heroic, glorious, or sweet. It is degrading, turning young men into “beggars” and “hags” who limp along...

Themes: The Realities of War 

The poem’s speaker makes a desperate attempt to end the abhorrence of war by telling the truth about it. Many anti-war poets during World War I hoped that if people knew what modern warfare was really like, they would turn away from war and stop supporting it. They thus countered the heroic myths of contemporary poets such as Rupert Brooke, whose poem “The Soldier” sentimentalizes death in war by stating that after he dies in battle, the...