The central message of "Dulce et Decorum Est" is that, if the reader could see what the speaker has seen -- the real horrors of war, the awful human toll, a young man's eyes as they roll around in his head while he, in pain, waits to die -- then the reader would never again repeat the "old Lie," that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country (a well-known line from Horace). ...
The central message of "Dulce et Decorum Est" is that, if the reader could see what the speaker has seen -- the real horrors of war, the awful human toll, a young man's eyes as they roll around in his head while he, in pain, waits to die -- then the reader would never again repeat the "old Lie," that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country (a well-known line from Horace). To see such sights convinces a person that no death in war is sweet. As a soldier in World War I, Wilfred Owen has seen these sights himself, and it is immediately clear, especially because the speaker calls this idea a "lie," that he does not agree that it is sweet to die, in war, for one's country (or any reason).
I find Owen's position to be compelling given the nature of the images in this poem: a man floundering in chlorine gas because he could not get his mask on in time, the gas burning his lungs so they fill with blood and he literally drowns in his own blood. To watch this man slowly die, knowing that he is dying, knowing that he knows that he's dying, and that there's nothing that any of them can do about it, is a truly horrifying thought. I think it gives people comfort to imagine that our loved ones die in wars for noble causes and that this, in some way, helps to justify their sacrifice. However, Owen does not want any of us to make the mistake of only thinking of death in war in this way. It might be noble, but it is also bitter, "bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues," not sweet.
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