Wilfred Owen's poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” relies mainly on an emotional engagement (pathos) to convey his feeling about The Great War. He clearly feels that this phrase lacks merit. Then men described in his poem are broken and tired, and marching through the night. Covered in mud, they march forward under great strain, injured, not looking or seeing where they area going.
Soon the men are attacked by gas. Some are lucky enough to don their gas masks, others succumb to the vile fate of mustard gas. The others watch on in horror as the lungs of their fallen brethren burn and bleed. The dying unable to scream as they slow drown in their own mucus and blood.
In our society, we glorify war. We cheaply and repeatedly refer to all those who wear our military's uniforms as heroes, stealing the power of that word, turning it into nothing more than a bumper sticker.
War is horrible and terrifying. War should be our last option. When our country goes to war, we are forced to teach our young men and women in uniform to selectively devalue human life. We place them in a position of often having to choose who lives and dies. They come home to us psychologically altered in ways the rest of us cannot even imagine, and they are the lucky ones.
Others die in blasts of smoke, blood, thunder, and death. Not ever seeing their killers, they die in the service of a political abstraction. Far away from home, in the heat of a desert that has known little peace in all of human history, these men die suddenly and terribly, far away from their families and their homes. The sweetness and rightness of dying for their country is shown to them one last time as they are placed in a metal box for their final journey home.
It is terrible and awful to die for one's country. While man will do so willing and honorably, it cannot be denied that all of them would rather live for their country.
-Ryan
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