Question

27.6 Exercise • In a short paragraph (150-200 words), explain why Wilfred Owen considers the phrase of the Roman poet Horace "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" a lie in relation to his combat experience in World War I.

Answer 1

Wilfred Owen, through his lines, asks that how the death of the men during the WWI can be said as 'Sweet' and betting. He is trying to portray the lie in Horace poem by bringing an example of the death of a soldier, in his company in a no man land, who suffocated violently from fumes and did not get gas mask on in time and overcome by chlorine gas. Descriptions like “guttering, choking, drowning,” and “hear the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues” show the real happening of trench warfare that lacks all the so called glory.

Another lie, according to Owen, is the lie that recruiters to the warfare and culture that prevailed largely during that period told to the young men in order to persuade them to come forward to fight in the Great war.

Thus Wilfred Owen says that the phrase "it is sweet and fitting to die or ones country" in Horace poem is an "Old lie".