Personal Perspectives Create Distinctive Views Challenges Life\"

¶ … personal perspectives create distinctive views challenges life" Wilfred Owen subject studied, His poems "Mental Cases" "Dulce Decorum est" assigned poems essay written. A speech 5 minutes duration.

Speech: The poetry of Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen is considered one of the greatest of the British 'war poets,' a group of writers who became esteemed for their often cynical views of World War I. Owen's life history as a writer is particularly extraordinary given that he wrote almost all of his poems in "slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of twenty-five, one week before the Armistice" (Wilfred Owen, 2013).

Perhaps Owen's most famous poem "Dulce et Decorum est" was directly inspired by an event he witnessed as a soldier. The cool, matter-of-fact poem describes Owen helplessly watching the death of a fellow soldier choking on poison gas. The Latin title, which is explained fully at the end of the poem, references the classical education so many of the young men who fought in the war had obtained before actually participating in combat. Unlike the sanitized and beautiful vision of Roman combat portrayed in antique literature, the reality is far different, particularly in the era of trench and technological warfare. However, the epitaph by Horace, which all British schoolboys would have learned, says that it is sweet (dulce) to die for one's country.

The beginning of the poem depicts the very unglamorous march of the troops: "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge." The troops are tired, angry, and miserable. Unlike the quick, agile soldiers of one's imagination, these men are barely staying alive. "Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots / But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind." The fact that they are so ill-cared for also shows the lack of concern for the troop's welfare, despite the fine rhetoric about the war. The men resemble poor beggars and have been stripped of their dignity.

Suddenly, another voice intrudes into the poem, seemingly out of nowhere. "Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling, / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time." This surprise insertion is deliberate, given that Owen and the rest of the soldiers were surprised themselves by the gas attack and the sudden urging of their commander to take action, put on their masks, and protect themselves. Suddenly, the poem shifts from straight description to a drama, as the soldiers try to protect themselves. However one man, perhaps because of fatigue, is not quick enough, and succumbs to the gas: "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning." Not only does the man die: Owen himself is haunted by the vision of the death he witnessed. Owen himself was protected by the gas mask but the other man was not so lucky. By mere chance Owen was saved.

The brutality of the death is awful, but also its senselessness and arbitrary quality. To underline this Owen speaks directly to the reader, shifting from a descriptive and narrative tone to an accusing and didactic tone:

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

The images Owen creates are unsparing in his portrayal of the physical consequences of the gas attack. The men do not care what cause they are dying for -- they are gassed by strangers; the soldier dies for no reason. That is why the words of the poem end: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est / Pro patria mori."

A less famous, but similarly-themed poem entitled "Mental Cases" depicts the mental rather than the physical consequences of warfare, detailing the images of shell-shocked patients who had literally gone mad in the trenches: "Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, /