In Dulce et decorum est, Wilfred Owen uses a variety of literary devices to highlight the monstrous disjunction between the gruesome reality of the battlefield and the he romanticized image of war that circulated through poems, newspapers and magazines at the start of the First World War. Owen's manipulation of traditional rhyming forms and meter, combined with his use of irony, figurative language, and vivid sensory description, helps establish the piece as a powerful anti-recruitment poem. The poem is also representative of a collective shift in values, as a generation shocked by the horrors of the First World War became disenchanted with pro-war romanticism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Owen creates a strong sense of dissonance by contrasting the form of the poem with its content. Although he makes subtle alterations to the poetic trend, Owen makes use of traditional rhyme schemes and conforms to loose iambic pentameter, echoing the form of a French ballad. As the images become increasingly grotesque, the stanzas depart from these conventions, highlighting the gruesome reality of war. For example, to describe the "dripping, choking, drowning" soldier who rushes towards him, Owen isolates the event from the previous line, creating a new stanza consisting of only two lines. The shift in focus and time (from the past to the present) suggests that this horrific image has particular meaning for Owen and is permanently seared into his consciousness. This technique also suggests that only by altering the form is Owen able to adequately communicate the scene before him; Recognizable poetic forms, such as the French ballad, are no longer an appropriate way to convey the horror of a reality that is no longer recognizable to Owen and his fellow soldiers: any attempt to do so is now jarring and parodic. Like the title of the piece, the conventional poetic form has become a source of ironic tension. Subverting the conventions used by pro-war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Jessie Pope (to whom the poem is addressed in an earlier draft), Owen condemns the rhetoric of the pro-war Romantics and their promulgation of self-sacrifice as the ultimate gesture heroic. act.Owen's feeling of disenchantment with pro-recruitment propaganda is a pervasive theme throughout the poem, and is particularly evident in the first stanza. Using onomatopoeia and alliteration, he creates a dull, heavy rhythm that mirrors the actions of tired soldiers "struggling through the mud." The repetition of the harsh sound in the line "Until the eerie flashes we turned our backs" gives the action a mechanical quality and emphasizes the monotony and futility of their effort. The result is almost soporific - they are in an ominous pause - and makes the pause in the iambic rhythm in the next verse more striking. The line opens with "GAS!" Gas! Quick, guys!--'', violently disrupting the meter with the use of exclamation marks and dashes. This gives the piece a surge of energy that parallels the adrenaline-filled panic of the soldiers "fumbling" with their "clumsy helmets just in time" – an image of war diametrically opposed to that of Pope's poetry, whose enthusiastic lines they portray conflict as a form of pseudo-recreation. To fully convey this discrepancy between pro-war sentiment and the hellish reality of war – a war that, for many, destroyed an entire worldview – Owen skillfully uses figurative language and vivid description/