Does Wilfred Owen Use Visual Imagery In Dulce Et Decorum Est

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In “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen, a poet who fought and died as a British soldier during WW1, illustrated the horror of modern warfare in his poems. By using visual imagery, loaded language, and polysemous he makes it easier for readers to imagine the senseless brutality of war. Owen uses the visual imagery to bring down great soldiers to a powerless child who is to weak to fight. The visual imagery paints the horrors of war so that readers can suffer right along the dying soldiers Owen is describing. Owen writes: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,/ Knocked-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge.” In this line, readers can imagine great soldiers in a hunched over position from exhaustion. Readers can imagine the soldiers’ knees knocking into each other over and over again, …show more content…
Owen when writing wants to bring emotions up that are normally not touched. So Owen uses words that purposely touch your feelings: “Obscene as cancer.” The word obscene brings a lot of negative connotation. When you hear obscene you’ll normally think of something that you did that was so intolerable that you couldn’t talk about it. So Owen wants the reader to understand that war is so wrong that you shouldn’t talk about it. Cancer as it is now, is not as a terrible word but it still has a negative connotation. If someone has cancer you give the family your condolences cause it is a very terrible thing to have. So the war is something you need to be sensitive about with the families that have children in the war. Owen tries throughout the poem to make it more personal so your emotions are more caring. So when Owen says “My friend”he is trying to make relations with you so you get more of a personal feel from the rest of the writing. So he uses language that will make you feel comfortable and bring you more into the story so that you get the full affect of what he is trying to