In his poem exhibiting the gruesome imagery of World War I, "Dulce et Decorum Est", Wilfred Owen conveys his strongly anti-war sentiments to the reader. Through the irony found in the ending, horrific imagery, and the feeling of surrealism woven into the poem, Owen forces the reader to experience the war, and therefore feel almost as decisively about it as he does. Owen applies the rhetorical situation, sensory imagery, and figurative language to contribute to the power and anti-war sentiment of the poem.

The rhetorical situation in the poem helps to make the reader accept the poem's message by showing that the speaker may be trusted to be knowledgeable

about the subject at hand. The poem would be far less effective had the speaker not personally experienced the vicious and cruel world war provides. Another

effective element of the rhetorical situation is that the audie

nce addressed in the poem is the person who "would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory/ The old lie" (25-27) if he himself had been to war. The speaker has been robbed by the deceitful notion of the sweetness of war; childhood and innocence are no longer fathomable. Essentially, the poem becomes an accusation and the reader, like a bell, can clearly hear bitterness in the speaker's voice for having been deceived so greatly.

The figurative language in the poem allows the reader to share in the speaker's sense of open-mouthed wonder at the situation. Owen states that "Men marched asleep" (5): a virtual impossibility, the metaphor represents the complete exhaustion endured by the soldiers. The "green sea" (14) of gas in which the soldier is "drowning" (14) depicts the dreamlike circumstances as the speaker perceived them- similar to the "alseep" metaphor, where only in an alternativ

Some common words found in the essay are:
Wilfred Owen, Decorum Est, rhetorical situation, figurative language, dulce et decorum, War Dulce, Explication Dulce, et decorum est, dulce et, et decorum, sensory imagery, decorum est, war speaker, figurative language poem, world war, imagery figurative language, situation sensory, language poem, sensory imagery figurative,
Approximate Word count = 625
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)