No Glory in Death in Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est"

By Rebekah Booth

In "Dulce et Decorum Est", Wilfred Owen highlights the danger of glorifying war by exploring the effects of propaganda both within war and past it. At first glance, it appears to be another anecdote of the terror of the World Wars. However, Owen’s poem is used both as an outlet for his own traumas and a way to confront the government he felt lied to him. Through disturbing imagery, lingering prose, and a rousing call to action, he exposes the horrors of combat and the lasting psychological effects of such patriotism. 

To fully comprehend Owen’s stance on war propaganda, it is crucial to understand his background as a soldier and the context of the war itself. World War I began in 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, which triggered a chain reaction of invasions. Germany then invaded Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, while Russia mobilized against Germany. Britain entered soon after the invasion of neutral Belgium. “The war was publicized by British politicians as morally necessary,” Ludwig writes in The Literature of War, “because Britain was required by treaty to help Belgium defend itself, and because it was Britain’s responsibility to protect the world from conquest by the less-civilized Germans.” This mentality framed Britain’s involvement as a noble endeavor, laying the foundation for a righteous campaign that Owen would later confront. Influenced by propaganda glorifying courage and honor, thousands of young men signed up to fight—Wilfred Owen among them. 

Owen enlisted in 1915 and was deployed as a lieutenant on the Western Front. According to an article from GaleBiographies: Popular People, “Four months at war was all [Owen] needed to grasp his subject, which was not the heroism of war, but the pity of it.” In the early days, Owen wrote in the styles of Brooke, Housman, and Yeats, until his fateful hospital stay with Siegfried Sassoon, a writer similarly known for his anti-war poetry. He encouraged Owen to use his experiences on the battlefield as inspiration and he went on to develop his unique literary style: a blend of pararhyme and vivid imagery that “eschewed traditional Romantic ideals of heroism” (GB:PP, ❡2). This laid the foundation he needed to create “Dulce et Decorum Est”, his famous poem condemning the rampant patriotism and toxic propaganda of his time. His stay in the hospital and interacting with other psychiatric patients, as well as his experience in the trenches, provided a much-needed insight into the struggles soldiers faced. 

Supported by his distinctive style and Sassoon’s advice, Owen is able to directly deconstruct the clean narratives promoted by propaganda. His primary obstacle with sharing his experience was attempting to “elegize the war dead without aestheticizing or sanitizing horrible deaths” (GB:PP, ❡9), which is something propaganda often employed in order to secure public support. Part of what makes “Dulce” so effective is that Owen never clarifies what side the soldier fought for. He suggests that allegiance and identity dissolve in suffering, and that soldiers are only men in the eyes of an infernal sunrise. The dissonant rhythm he creates between the reality of trench warfare and the polished story governments gave the public gives his audience a lasting impression of what he had to endure.

Though “Dulce” is a short poem, it is striking. Owen is unapologetic in his use of graphic description, forcing his audience to confront the brutality of the trenches with sickening, intimate detail. Lines such as “...white eyes writhing in his face/His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin…” (Owen, line 20) leave no room for illusions of heroism. By creating something so raw, he presents a reality impossible to conceal, thereby undermining propaganda’s main function. Stephen Benz argues that he “refused to romanticize the soldier’s death” (Benz, ❡5), establishing a clear boundary between Owen and government-sanctioned lies. Unlike the official narratives, which rely on bold lines between good and evil, Owen offers only one side: suffering. Because of this, he topples the carefully crafted messages of wartime propaganda and replaces it with all that’s left—truth. 

Beyond literary critique, “Dulce et Decorum Est” reveals the psychological toll war—and propaganda—takes on soldiers, who find themselves fighting for survival rather than the cause they were promised. A chief strength of Owen’s technique is his balance of transparency and obscurity; he withholds any political identifiers while baring the realities of war. That is to say, he never reveals which side of the war the narrator or soldier was on. This is vital in reinforcing his point that every soldier is only a man under his uniform, vulnerable to both physical and psychological harm. Kimberly Lutz emphasizes this contrast by comparing his poem to another equally prominent work, Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. She points out that in Tennyson’s poem, like many other pro-war fictions, “The reader learns only that ‘horse and hero fell.’ The bloodshed, the smells, the confusion that go along with battle are not depicted” (Lutz, ❡3). This comparison highlights Owen’s deliberate choice to include intimate details that propaganda chooses to omit.

Lutz goes on to observe Owen’s peculiar decision to break the fourth wall in his final stanza. She writes, “Abandoning the ethos of self-sacrifice, the narrator of Owen's poem does question why he and his fellow soldiers must miserably die in what seems to be a fruitless campaign” (Lutz, ❡3). At no point in “Dulce” does the narrator parrot “the old Lie” to the audience to minimize his suffering. Instead, he renounces it in the name of a call for reformation. This shift from descriptive to accusatory speaks to a psychological rupture—the pressure of pain and trauma pushing the narrator, or Owen himself, to implore the audience to understand. This poem being one of the few published before Owen’s death in 1918 deepens his plea. He describes in his poem a recurring nightmare, “In all my dreams before my helpless sight,/He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” (Owen, line 17), which demonstrates the private hell he suffered, borne of PTSD. This personal moment lends a weight to his final message, a desperate appeal to his audience’s empathy. 

As Michael LeBlanc notes, “on the surface the poem chronicles the physical destruction of men at war. “Dulce et Decorum Est” achieves its power, however, through the equally compelling discussion of both the emotional and spiritual destruction with which war threatens the individual” (LeBlanc, 115). The destruction Owen suggests is what he intentionally presents. The poem’s final lines, “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old Lie” (Owen, lines 25-27) broadens its message from a record to a warning. He isn’t simply critiquing the glorification of war, he’s commenting on the danger of propagating the toxic patriotism he himself fell for. By rebuking this soiled legacy, he transforms his nightmare into a powerful call to action—not to merely remember war, but to abstain from the lies that sustain it. 

At its core, Wilfred Owen’s poem is a confrontation of war and the myths perpetuating its continuation. Aided by his distinctive styles and propensity towards vivid description, Owen replaces glorification and patriotism with suffering and grief. By doing so, he forces his readers to face the cost of allowing such myths to steer society. Owen reminds us that, in the end, propaganda is persuasive—not honest. And the truth, in war, is paid for by all-too-human misery.

By Rebekah Booth