Wilfred Owen's "Dolce et Decorum Est" uses many similes to convey the horror of war through his vivid and shocking word usage, as his intent and purpose is to convey what war is like, through using the word "like" to link up negativity in each simile. Owen stays also uses metaphors, which effectively compliment the tone. His tone is dreamlike and he refers back to the nightmares that he has surrounding all he has seen and suggests to his audience that, they too would likely have the same terrifying dreams if they had seen what he had seen. With all the literary devices used, simile, metaphor, and tone, the horror of war is conveyed in a way that reaches to the audience on a deep level and shows none of the nostalgia and nationalism that many war stories and poems utilize.
The speaker of the poem, serves as the expert on war, as a veteran of it. But, unlike poems that may convey the bravery and courage of battle, this soldier and speaker focuses on the negative and pervasive state of battle. He brings the battle to light, so to speak, through dark and dreamlike phrases. It seems as if this poem is meant to be and could be a dream that the audience could have. While the narrator speaks of marching on, he refers to it in the fourth line as "and toward our distant rest began to trudge" (Owen, 1). This sets up the tone of the work to be dreamlike and distant and, as the soldiers must go on, wearily and sleepily with rest being something that was not so much distant, as was unreachable. To forget what was experienced would be rest, but the narrator cannot forget.
The narrator presents the poem in a way that suggests he is in a perpetual nightmare, constantly dreaming of a man, who died in front of him. He uses the metaphor on line 14 "as under a green sea, I saw him drowning." This idea of drowning under a green sea, is interesting, as it shows how an individual can be lost in a group, losing his individuality and ultimately his life.