Owen's poems, published only after his death, along with his letters from the front line to his mother, are perhaps the most powerful and vivid accounts of the horror of war to emerge from the First World War.

In one of his most well known poems, 'Dulce et Decorum est' Owen challenges the famous Latin saying by Horace which means that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country. Owen wrote this as he wanted to provoke compassion at its deepest levels for what was going on every day in the war areas. Owen was greatly concerned about the patriotism of people who knew nothing of the horrors of fig

This poem, just like 'Exposure' offers no comfort or consolation for the suffering that happens in the time of war. This highlights Owen's negative approach to war.

This poem succeeds in conveying a sense of futile suffering very effectively and also highlights Owen's negative approach to war.

Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow

In stanza five, the snow falls on their faces as if death has come 'feeling for our faces'. The alliteration of the 'f' sound adds to the metaphorical transformation from soft snowflakes to bony fingers as it is a soft sound and demonstrates the 'fingering stealth'. The marvellous para-rhyme between 'snow-dazed' and 'sun-dozed' represent the almost seamless transition between reality and their dreams. In their dreams, the snowflakes become blossom on a summer's day and a blackbird is knocking it off a tree onto their faces:

This seems to suggest the steady falling of shells. Also there is an interesting transferred epithet on 'frantic shell', which seems to suggest that the falling shells are in a frenzied, spasmodic fashion and that no one can predict where or when the next shell is going to fall. The first word of the third line, 'Hammered', is very heavily accented for lots of reasons: the enjambment carried over from the previous line, the previous line is iambic and it is the first word of the line: '...on frantic shell / Hammered on top...' The heavy accent on the word 'Hammered' emphasises the idea that shells are falling constantly. In this poem Owen frequently uses unpleasant connotations to describe the ghastly conditions, especially in the next line when he describes the constantly falling rain as '...guttering down in waterfalls of slime'. The 'guttering' rain suggests that the water is falling in solid columns and that it is old and stale. The 'waterfalls of slime' imply that the water is green, cold and murky. The next line describes how much water there is and how it is 'rising hour by hour'. It sounds very soft, as there is no consonance and it is a direct contrast to the line after that describing how the mud chokes 'the steps too thick with clay to climb'. The word 'choked' suggests that it is the only passage to fresh air and the phrase 'clay to climb' is said from the back of the throat and simulates the sound of choking. As this line of the poem is completely monosyllabic and iambically regular, it has the sense of speeding up, which suggests feet scrambling on muddy steps.

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Approximate Word count = 2413
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)