Dulce Et Decorum Est, An Analysis

Good morning to the editor and others receiving this message. My suite of poems, specifically Dulce et Decorum Est and Insensibility invites the reader into the world of frontline bloodshed, exposing the unbearable mental and physical effects frontline warfare has on the human condition. My poems provoke their audience to acknowledge the importance of telling the truth by exposing how superimposed war zeitgeist by glorious war author’s led youthful solder’s to the frontline with perilous misinterpretations of war. Written based upon my first-hand experiences as a frontline soldier, both poems confront their audience with an uncommon perspective of war, one that portrays the inhumanity and madness of war. In Dulce, I rely upon my first-hand experiences as a front-line lieutenant, constructing confronting visual imagery to force the world of …show more content…
I wrote insensibility to contest the misrepresentation of war portrayed by Woodsworth’s “Character of a Happy Warrior” in which my exploitation of an ode form and yet again pararhyme provides a solemn tone and rhythm, to strengthen my bitter cynicism in inviting the audience to experience the psychological human experience of war.
I employ Pararhyme “shelling/shilling” to provide the poem with an uneasy rhythm. The repetition of ‘happy’ sardonically mocks the soldier’s lack of spirituality, whilst the metaphor ‘their spirit drags no pack’ elicits the burden of cognitive well being during frontline warfare. Moreover, the metaphor ‘scorching cautery’ referring to the deliberate burning away of memory, culpability, sorrow and guilt, elucidates the psychological damage war does to the cognitive well being of frontline