NEW IB ENGLISH LITERATURE COURSE BD SOMANI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL MUMBAI. EMAIL andrew.callahan@bdsint.org
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I found this online and it's a really handy powerpoint that covers many key points of the poem Disabled by Wilfred Owen. From this ppt there are links to other presentations on the poems coming for this exam.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) 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(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) 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,(11) 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,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)
Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
Notes on Dulce et Decorum
Est
1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin
saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely
understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War.
They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die
for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour
to fight and die for your country.
2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with
a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area
between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the
Dark.)
3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line
where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing
through the air
5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have
struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling
behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it
would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the
lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned
8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks
9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn
live tissue
10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas
masks
11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out
like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter,
referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it
might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling
12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows
chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was
issuing from the soldier's mouth
13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly
believing in the rightness of the idea
14. ardent - keen
15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1
above.
1 Anthem - perhaps best known in the expression "The National Anthem;" also, an important religious song (often expressing joy); here, perhaps, a solemn song of celebration
2 passing-bells - a bell tolled after someone's death to announce the death to the world
3 patter out - rapidly speak
4 orisons - prayers, here funeral prayers
5 mockeries - ceremonies which are insults. Here Owen seems to be suggesting that the Christian religion, with its loving God, can have nothing to do with the deaths of so many thousands of men
6 demented - raving mad
7 bugles - a bugle is played at military funerals (sounding the last post)
8 shires - English counties and countryside from which so many of the soldiers came
9 candles - church candles, or the candles lit in the room where a body lies in a coffin
10 pallor - paleness
11 dusk has a symbolic significance here
12 drawing-down of blinds - normally a preparation for night, but also, here, the tradition of drawing the blinds in a room where a dead person lies, as a sign to the world and as a mark of respect. The coming of night is like the drawing down of blinds.
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." "War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations."
"We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate."
The following is mirrored from its source at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/liberation_curriculum/speeches/beyondvietnam.htm Although the speech was made about the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the poster on Youtube saw parallels with the invasion of Iraq. America left Vietnam and is today one of the biggest foreign investors in that country, which is ironically ruled by the communist party which the thousands of Americans died to defeat. King's speech was prophetic and history shows how 'victory' in wars always leaves a legacy of bitterness, which may indeed fuel future wars - consider the defeat of Germany in WW1 and the rise of Hitler leading to WW2.
Quote from Camus which was reproduced by Edward Said in his book on Eurocentric viewpoints in literature.
As far as Algeria is concerned, national independence is a formula
driven by nothing other than passion. There has never yet been an
Algerian nation. The Jews, the Turks, Greeks, Italians, or Berbers
would be as entitled to claim the leadership of this potential nation.
As things stand, the Arabs do not comprise the whole of Algeria … The
French of Algeria are also natives, in the strong sense of the word.
Moreover, a purely Arab Algeria could not achieve that economic
independence without which political independence is nothing but an
illusion. (cited by Said, 1993 p 179).
Comment: Although Camus was 'left-wing' on domestic French issues, the fact he was born as a French white citizen in French colonial Algeria, led to his refusal to support Algerian independence. On this issue he was in the view of many people 'on the wrong side of history'. There remains the fact none of the Arab characters in "L'Etranger' have names.
However, his novel remains an important work, Meursault's emotional detachment is perhaps a symptom of the wider state of European sensibility in the aftermath of World War 2. Beckett and Camus both struggled with the big questions facing humanity in the wake of such carnage. Where is God? What does it mean to be human? What are the limits of power? What is the role of ethics and morality in a world which lacks the certainty of religious faith? Is the repetition of simple daily actions - removing a hat or shoe (Beckett) or cleaning one's flat (Meursault) the only way to punctuate the boredom and pass the time away in a meaningless or at least indifferent universe?(Mr C)
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Further reading for advanced students: Alice Holbrook, Knox College, USA
"In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,
imperial forces use naming as a tool of oppression, forcing language
which represents their point of view upon those they have conquered.
However, in their novels, Conrad and Coetzee also portray imperialists
as perverting the correspondence of naming and characteristics and
destroying the basis of their own power, precipitating a moral, and
finally a physical, downfall. Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians
use similar perspectives on the inabsolute in imperial language to
reach the same conclusion about imperialism itself: it is misguided,
and, ultimately, doomed."
The interactive oral is a focused class
discussion in which all students and the teacher participate. Each student
should be responsible for initiating some part of the discussion in at least
one of the interactive orals for one work. Students may participate as a group
or individually, and teachers may organize the discussion in a variety of
different ways.
The discussions should
address the following cultural and contextual considerations.
• In what ways do time
and place matter to this work?
• What was easy to
understand and what was difficult in relation to social and cultural context
and issues?
• What connections did
you find between issues in the work and your own culture(s) and experience?
• What aspects of
technique are interesting in the work?
Formal requirements
At least one oral must be
completed in relation to each work studied in part 1.
The suggested minimum
time for discussion of each work is 30 minutes.
Stage 2: The reflective
statement
The reflective statement is a short
writing exercise and should be completed as soon as possible following the
interactive oral. Each student is asked to provide a reflection on each of the
interactive orals. The reflective statement on the same work as the student’s
final assignment is submitted for assessment.
The reflective statement must be based on the following question.
• How was your understanding of cultural and contextual
considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral?
*Michael Meyer argues that the play's theme is not women's
rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind
of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person."
*In a speech given to
the Norwegian Women's Rights
League in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of
having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote
"without any conscious thought of making propaganda,"
his task having been "the description of humanity.”
Students are reminded to read the book first. The World Literature Essay is your imaginative response to the text. The film is posted here as a work of art in its own right. It is not intended to encourage laziness.
Despite being posted by the 'gospel coalition' this is a reasonable attempt to explain the concepts. However, one might add that the optimism of modernism was partly a belief that reason, science, technology, education and democracy would create a better world. From Darwin to Freud, Marx to Joyce there is a belief in the power of the mind to understand, to make sense of the world.
Joyce wrote in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", "By thinking of things you could understand them."
Some of that optimism survived World War 1.
However, World War 2, the mass murders in Auschwitz, the aerial bombings by the Nazis and the Allies, Hiroshima, Nagasaki all led to the emergence of Postmodernism - there is little optimism or faith in Camus and Beckett. However, there is at least a dogged determination to endure, to survive, to persist - as in Beckett's novel, "The Unnamable"
