FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
This simile compares the soldiers to “old beggars under sacks,” emphasising their exhaustion and loss of dignity.
What is “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”?
This verb describes the soldiers’ slow, heavy movement through mud.
What is “trudge”?
This visual image shows men “marching asleep,” highlighting exhaustion.
What is the image of men marching as if unconscious?
In stanza 1, soldiers are in this physical condition, shown through images of limping, blindness, and fatigue.
What is extreme exhaustion?
This is Owen’s overall message about war.
What is that war is horrific and not glorious?
This simile likens the soldiers’ coughing to that of old women, revealing their physical ruin.
What is “coughing like hags”?
In the phrase “an ecstasy of fumbling,” this word ironically suggests frantic intensity rather than joy.
What is “ecstasy”?
This sensory detail (“Gas! GAS!”) creates urgency and panic.
What is auditory imagery?
This sudden event interrupts their march and triggers chaos.
What is the gas attack?
Owen counters patriotic propaganda by using this literary technique, showing brutal reality.
What is realism?
This metaphor suggests the soldiers’ feet are so damaged that they seem to be wearing blood as shoes.
What is “blood-shod”?
This phrase describes the soldier’s lungs during the gas attack, revealing internal decay
What are “froth-corrupted lungs”?
These three verbs describe the dying soldier’s movements and make the reader visualise his agony.
What are “guttering, choking, drowning”?
Owen switches to this verb tense in stanza 3, making the nightmare immediate.
What is the present tense?
Owen writes as someone with this unique perspective, giving authenticity to his critique.
What is the perspective of a soldier-poet who witnessed the horrors?
This extended metaphor compares the gas-filled air to a “green sea” in which a man appears to drown.
What is the drowning imagery used to describe the gas attack?
This disturbing verb describes the dying man’s choking blood and creates an auditory image.
What is “gargling”?
The phrases “misty panes” and “thick green light” are examples of this kind of imagery used to depict the gas.
What is colour imagery?
This happens to the soldier who fails to fit his helmet in time.
What is that he inhales gas and dies violently?
The poem challenges this traditional idea celebrated in recruitment rhetoric.
What is the glorification of dying for one’s country?
This simile describes a dying man’s face as worse than a devil’s, emphasising moral corruption caused by war.
What is “like a devil’s sick of sin”?
This famous Latin phrase meaning “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” is labelled by Owen as a lie.
What is “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”?
This object in stanza three symbolises the mechanical and impersonal treatment of dead soldiers.
What is the wagon?
In the final stanza, Owen addresses this person directly to condemn pro-war propaganda.
Who is the reader or the patriotic storyteller “my friend”?
Owen ends by calling the patriotic motto “The old Lie,” showing his attitude toward propaganda.
What is condemnation of those who mislead the young into war?