Once you have read “Audience, Appeal, and Tone,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and “Dulce et Decorum Est,” please respond questions 1-7 below using complete sentences:
The Red Wheelbarrow:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
1) What one word stands out to you the most?
2) How does setting the words barrow, water, and chickens on lines of their own help substantiate the poem’s first line?
3) What argument could you make for symbolism and theme?
4) How do you think this poem appeals to the audience?
5) What do you make of how this poem is presented?
Dulce et Decorum Est:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime–
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
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
Bitten as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
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!
6) What do you think is the main message of Owen’s poem?
7) How would you characterize the speaker’s attitude towards war? How do you think this poem appeals to the audience?