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Activities on "Dulce et decorum est" by Wilfred Owen
Pre-reading
What kind of expectations does the title set up?
While-reading
Exercise n. 1.
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1. Who is the speaker in this poem? What is the setting? Who is the listener?
- 2. What is the speaker’s attitude toward war, and what in the poem reveals this attitude?
- 3. List some imagery in this poem (words that conjure up the senses—taste, touch,
smell, sight, hearing). What effect does the imagery have in this poem? What kind
of picture is painted?
- 4. Identify metaphors and/or similes in this poem. What effect does this figurative
language have on the poem?
- 5. Identify examples of alliteration.
- 6. What is the rhyme scheme?
- 7. Identify ironies in the poem.
Exercise n. 2
Focus on the first two stanzas and fill in the chart below with words and phrases referring to physical and psychological suffering.
Physical suffering
........................................................
Psychological suffering
...........................................................
Exercise n. 3
The end of the second stanza introduces the passage from the real world of the battlefield to one that is unreal, nightmarish, hallucinatory and powerful
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1. Consider the language devices used by the poet:Similes; Metaphors.
- 2. What semantic areas do they belong to?
- 3. What is the poet's aim in using them?
Post-reading
Owen prefaced a collection of his poems just before dying. He wrote:
"I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity"
Do you find his words relevant to the poem as a whole?
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