Essay on "Compare and Contrast Argument"

Essay 4 pages (1271 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

namely Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et decorum est" and Jack Gilbert's "The abnormal is not courage," comparing and contrasting them. The poems actually illustrate opposite views regrading the reality of war.

The theme of Owen's poem can be guessed right from the very title. The "dulce et decorum est" phrase is part of a famous Latin construction which goes like this: "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" which literally means "it is sweet and right to die for one's own country." In other words, the act of sacrificing oneself in order to defend the country of birth is not only a duty, but also an act of virtue and something pleasureful in itself. The pleasure comes from the idea of sacrificing the self for a noble cause and knowing that one has done what he was supposed to do.

The entire poem is a very plastic description of what takes place in on the battle field. Knowing the period in which the poem was written, it is easy to understand that the poet is referring to the world war to which he actually took place. The use of the collective pronoun "we" underlines the presence of the poet and his participation to the scene, increasing the emotional charge associated with it. Despite the title and the attitude which one expects to find in the poem, right from the beginning the poet draws the attention to the fact that there is nothing glamorous about having to fight on the battle filed. The identification of the soldiers with beggars is a metaphor suggesting the lack of dignity. Perhaps this derives from the act of killing other people. It seems that the soldiers are doing something which is extremely tiring and one might expect hat their destination involves something constructive. Yet, the poet soon mentions that their destination is a "distant rest, a metaphor for death. Death is not near and the only alternative is the chaotic hell of the battlefield.

The description creates the image of a powerful image of decay. "men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame all blind;/Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind"( 5-8). The enumeration of adjectives such as asleep, blind, drunk, deaf" suggest that the soldiers are rather absent and unresponsive. The sleep might be a suggestion referring to the sleep of the conscience, not only to the diminished consciousness. Indeed they seem to be in a state of trance. Even the bombs which are meant to illuminate the field and falling everywhere around them are tired. This suggests that the inner state of the soldiers has been transmitted to the surrounding environment transforming it.

The idea of the state of trance is enhanced by the image of the gas bombs which create "an ecstasy of fumbling" (9). Reality seems to disintegrate, yet the screams which occur from time to time remind everybody that this is reality " but someone still was yelling out and stumbling,/and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime"(11-12). The picture starts to resemble hell more and more. Indeed a dieing soldier's expressions is compared to the face of a devil "sick of sin. The act of dieing is thoroughly descried as the ultimate act of destruction. The scene is described as being "obscene": "If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,/Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud, / of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues"(21-24). The destruction is compared to cancer, suggesting that there is no escape. The adjective "obscene" on the other hand suggests that there is no moral dimension in what is happening, on the contrary. By now, the readers ought to ask themselves about the validity of the Latin construction since… READ MORE

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