Dulce Et Decorum Est translates to it is sweet and honourable to die for one's country, Wilfred Owen knew this was a lie firsthand due to his World War One combat experience. The Song My Paddle Sings is a beautiful piece written by a first nations woman who felt a strong connection to nature and decided to use that connection in her writing. Both of these poems display completely different sides of the world, One being the beauty of nature and the other being the horrors of man.
Dulce Et Decorum Est was written by Wilfred Owen after he had returned home from World War One. He went to war because he, along with thousands of others, fell victim to the propaganda of the time. He ended up giving Dulce Et Decorum Est a new meaning by writing this poem so that no one else would fall victim to the propaganda that he did, which may have been the reason he used so much direct address in his poem. He wanted the reader to feel that personal connection with the poem so they would trust him.
“the knowledge of combat is a prerequisite for the production of literacy that adequately deals with war.”(Combat Gnosticism: The Ideology of First World War Poetry Criticism, Hopkins, 204)
This quotation is in direct comparison to what Owen Wilfred was trying to accomplish with this poem. He uses his real war experience to warn people about what actually happens in combat.
The Song My Paddle Sings tells the story of a person paddling a sailboat down a river. The writer of this poem, Emily Pauline Jhonson, was a first nations writer who clearly felt a strong connection to nature and uses this poem to display it. The metaphor of this person paddling a sailboat is also a very interesting topic. “The sail is idle, the sailor too; O! wind of the west, we wait for you. Blow, blow!” (The Song My Paddle Sings, Johnson) This could mean that she is asking for help but never receiving it, she feels she needs to paddle her own boat. She feels as though she needs to do everything herself. Margaret Atwood even wrote an opera based on her life where we get an inside scoop on Pauline and her sister's life.
“What interested me was that it was this rather convoluted story involving two sisters, Eva and Pauline, and they had very different ideas about how to live in the world,” (Margaret Atwood Illuminates the Life of Canadian Poet, Emily Pauline Johnson, Harriet Staff)
She may have felt as though she was alone in her journey because of the relationship she had with her sister, they disagreed on how the world worked and how they should live, this could have been the inspiration she needed to write this poem.
Both Dulce Et Decorum Est and The Song My Paddle Sings display what the world is like, although they present completely opposite sides of it. Dulce Et Decorum Est presents the horrors of man through the brutality of war and The Song My Paddle Sings displays the beauty of nature through a story of a person paddling a sailboat on a windless day. They both have hidden meanings, Dulce Et Decorum Est was written by a soldier who fell victim to propaganda and attempted to warn people that the war wasn’t all fun and games and the woman who wrote The Song My Paddle Sings was for help but felt she never received it.
In conclusion, Dulce Et Decorum Est and The Song My Paddle Sings talk about
completely different sides of the world, the horrors of man and the beauty of nature. Dulce
Et Decorum Est was written by Wilfred Owen, a World War One soldier who had first-hand combat experience. The Song My Paddle Sings is a beautiful story about a person paddling a sailboat on a windless day. Both poems have hidden messages that relate back to the writer and their experiences.
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