The treatment of war in the play Arms and the Man and the poem Dulce Et Decorum Est by George Bernard Shaw and Wilfred Owen respectively is quite similar. Both writers use satire, irony and sarcasm to poke holes in romantic and noble attitudes regarding war. In Owen’s poem, he begins by describing the realistic aspects of actually fighting in a war. Men are “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,/Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” (Owen 1). In other words, the actual realities of war are only romantic or heroic to those who have never been in one. Being in one makes the soldier understand first hand that there is nothing romantic or glorious about war—it is a hellish nightmare that anyone with common sense would choose to avoid. Owen then takes us through a poison gas attack on his troop and his eye-witness account of one man “flound’ring like a man in fire or lime/…He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” (Owen 1). Owen uses more graphic descriptions to convey the irony of real versus romanticized war than Shaw, but he uses the realism to lead up to his final sarcastic statement on war, which is that after watching eyes writhe in faces, blood gurgle in lungs and incurable sores on innocent tongues as he has, we “would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori” (Own 1). In other words, only those who have not been in war would dare tell a younger man seeking the “fame” and “glory” or war that it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s fatherland.
In Arms and the Man, we get a much more humorous but just as effective lampooning of romanticized notions of war and battle. Shaw uses Sergius, an idealistic and foolish soldier, to satirize romantic notions of war. Sergius explains to Louka that on the battlefield wealth and poverty do not separate soldier
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