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Dulce Et Decorum Est


As the flares lit up the sky, the flares marked the position of dead or injured soldiers. The poet describes this as "Haunting" this is because they are haunted by the carnage and slaughter they had witnessed. Owen says that they are haunting also as the soldiers could have flashbacks or nightmares about the flares going off which could be haunting to them. .
             The tone changes dramatically in the second verse. Owen uses the phrase - .
             "Gas! GAS! Quick boys".
             the panic of the soldiers is conveyed by the poet's use of explanation marks and capital letters. The soldiers are panicing when the gas bomb goes off, the writer shows this by using the works "fumbling" and "clumsy" to emphasise their panic. They are panicing to get their gas masks on in time before the gas attacks their lungs and starts to kill them. One of the soldiers didn't get his mask on in time. Owen uses a simile to describe how the soldier is dying in the gas attack as a result of being to slow in getting his gas mask on - .
             "Floundering like a man in fire or lime".
             he uses a simile as if the man being burned by the gas attack is being compared to someone burning in a fire. His skin is being burnt away and it is as if he has been covered in lime. We can feel the mans pain and agony as his flesh is burning.
             Owen uses an extended metaphor -.
             "Dim, through the misty pains and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.".
             Owen compares a man dying in an attack to a man drowning in the sea; the clouds of green gas are like the sea surrounding the soldier. When you drown you suffocate and the soldier is suffocating because he has no air. This shows the reader that the man was drowning in his own blood, right in front of the other soldiers. He has made comparisons in this metaphor such as he says about the soldier drowning, by this he is saying that the soldier is dying. Another comparison is the green sea is meant to be a cloud of gas.


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