Dulce et decorum est

   Because of the media's misrepresentation of war, it is easy to think of fighting in battle as heroic and honorable. Owen's poem convinces the reader of just the opposite, and turns a beautiful scenario into a harrowing warning. Soldiers, who are often thought of as strong and courageous, are reduced to "beggars under sacks, knock-kneed and coughing like hags"(1-2). The speaker expresses that the soldiers entered the war hoping for glory or to die with dignity but the war has robbed them of their youth and health. In truth, the soldier's die gruesome deaths, "white eyes writhing in his face...blood, gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs",the opposite of what they were promised (20-23). The speaker warns other young people looking for glory in war not to believe the Latin quotation, Dulce et Decorum est, it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country, calling it a lie.  The fact that Wilfred Owen witnessed these horrors first hand and later died under the same conditions, emphasizes the poem's message. Knowledge of Owen's fate adds to the poem's bleakness, it feels as though Owen foresaw his own death and knew its presence was ominous. Its author and the circumstances under which it was written, give the poem a candid and credible perspective of war and the affects it has on those who experience it first hand.