Zee Blog

Every day has its ups and downs

Well, I got mid-term number one out of the way. It wasn't too bad.I had to write an in-class essay about the role of men in three feminist works. The works asked to compare and contrast were "The Astronomer's Wife", "The Yellow Wallpaper", and "Yellow Woman".

Ugh, just when I thought the day was going well I had to come home to find that I went WAY over my cell phone minute limit and I'm getting quite the bill. Don't they understand it's my one shining thread to humanity?!

Oi. Well, that just means I'll be sitting pretty at home.

Anyways, gonna keep this short for the moment, I will write a bit more later. I will leave you guys with an interesting poem though with a bit of commentary at the end of it.

Wilfred Owen

[1893-1918]

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstacy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in timel
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,
Obscene as cancer, bitter 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.


Summed up, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" means it is "Sweat and honorable to die for one's country". The man that wrote this was an enlisted soldier during World War 1. He wrote it it in a ditch.

7 days before peace was declared he was shot and killed attacking a stationary machine gun position.