War is presented as cruel and barbarous in this poem, set on a World War I battlefield. It opens not with soldiers depicted as young, strong and glorious, but describes them as old, sick, broken people:
Bent double, like old beggars ... coughing like hags.
It continues by noting how soldiers have lost their boots and limp on with bloody feet, "lame ... blind ... drunk with fatigue." There is nothing heroic in this depiction of the modern warrior.
Owen then describes a mustard gas attack, particularly focusing on a soldier who gets caught in the attack without his gas mask on. Owen doesn't hold back in his graphic description of the man's fate:
"white eyes writhing ... the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/ obscene as cancer ... incurable sores ..."
Owen addresses the audience directly, telling them if they saw such sights they would not glorify war. He then calls the old phrase "dulce and decorum est," which means "it is sweet and fitting" to die for one's country, "the old Lie."
Owen wants his audience to see that war is horrible, not heroic, ghastly not glorious, and that it is not "sweet" to die for one's country.
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