Tone to Convey Meaning? What Essay

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Then the poet uses the cultivated Latin of the title, which he presumably learned in school to truly cut deep into the reader's false sensibility of war: "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."

The final lines of the poem are ironic, but not just because of the stupidity of the words that it is sweet to die, choking on gas, for one's country. The irony is conveyed in a masterful fashion: Owen titles the poem with the words sweet and good, but then expands upon the title cliche with the full phrase in the final lines, after showing the reader its consequences.
Owen's use of different linguistic registers -- the initial words that give a sense of the footsteps of the solder's trudge, the officer's warning dialogue, and the use of cliches to reveal the lies of the powerful, are unique. Owen was a soldier himself, and his experience gives his ironic tone a compassion that is not purely humorous (like Alexander Pope) or merely clever and bitter (like Thomas Hardy). Of course, there is both humor and bitterness in the poem, but the irony is tinged with a truthful sense of deep sadness that….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/tone-convey-meaning-18195