ay it ought to be. It encourages thinking and feeling, while removing ignorance. The intensity grows as the length of the poem grows. First, the speaker told of the men, and how they trudged towards distant rest (566). Now, further in the poem he singles out a single man. He also mentions himself as he explains “I saw him drowning”. He is referring to the one man who could not get his gas mask on in time to prevent death. During this passage, I could not help but to visualize the one young man who was left “flound’ring”, and maintaining dry eyes became near impossible. Again, I am reminded of the powerful sarcasm introduced with the first line of the poem. How could anyone glorify the agony of watching a young boy scraping at the eyes of death? The speaker describes the journey home, and suggests, “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace / Behind the wagon that we flung him in”(566), which delivers a powerful blow. The use of the word “flung” in the above passage seems to have double meaning. It depicts the chilling reality that human life is disposable when it comes to war. It also implies that we have not seen this young mans face, and we did not watch him die—to the non-veteran, he is merely a statistic. The speaker will never forget this man, and through his words, neither will anyone who reads this poem and takes it to heart. The speaker continues to graphically describe the repulsive conditions of which they endured. The rank conditions, and the cloud of death hovers, waiting for the next life to swallow. Finally, the speaker bitterly asserts, “To children ardent for some desperate glory, /The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori”. At this point his rage practically explodes from the page, which he deserves; it is poetic justice. I could never be so brazen as to say I understand what men who have been in war have gone throug...
