There are often misguided glorified ideas told to people when they first go to war. They are told that they will be seen as strong, courageous, and somehow immortal. It is considered a great honor to serve your country during war, but all is not as it seems. The gruesome reality of war often goes unrecognized when recruiting new people. Wilfred Owen's poem “Dulce est Decorum et” paints a horrific picture of the bloodshed and horror behind the war. Owen uses his personal traumas to illustrate the graphic image that is not revealed when people first come together. Thomas Hardy's poem “The Man He Killed” recounts a man's experience of killing a man and living with the aftermath. The speaker is forced to try to justify his actions to himself. In Owen's poem “Dulce est Decorum et,” the poet uses similes to create a visual image of the terrifying experience he experienced during the war. He uses the simile “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” (line 1) to describe his physical condition. He is unable to walk straight because the wounds he sustained fighting in the war make it difficult for him to find his strength. He compares his sleep deprivation to being “drunk with fatigue” (7), likening it to an inability to fully control his body. Owen also talks about how war affects soldiers even in their sleep. He says, “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He dives upon me, dripping, choking, drowning” (15-16). It's inhumane that Owen can't find peace even in his sleep. He closes his eyes to rest and is still haunted by images of the war. The stanzas are effective in revealing the reality of war because it is “disconcerting in its terrifying physicality and presentation of endless suffering” (Sillars 219). He described his comrade's painful death as “obscene as a cancer, bitter as the ruminant, of vile and incurable sores on innocent tongues” (23-24), describing the cruel reality of war. Owen exposes the lie when he says that others “would not so eagerly tell” (25) to “children burning with some desperate glory” (26) the lie that it is honorable to die for one's country if they had had Thomas's poem Hardy “The Man Who Killed", talks about how a man would have befriended the man he killed if they had met under different circumstances. There is only one speaker in the poem who reflects on his thoughts. Who speaks of the poem is looking for a reason to justify killing another man just like him. He struggles to understand why he shot another man because he constantly pauses and tries to convince himself that what he is saying is true his own thoughts and his need to repeat himself show "that the explanation he has taken hold of is somehow insufficient" (Baker). He cannot accept that the reason he killed this man was simply because he should have done so. The use of analytical words such as “enemy” (line 10) and “picturesque” (17) is his attempt to make the murder less emotional. The speaker attempts to make the murder acceptable by making it seem like it was the necessary thing to do. The two men might have behaved differently if the war had not pitted them against each other. It's dehumanizing because he had to kill a man who he could have been friends with if they hadn't been put in a life or death situation. He wonders about the dead man's financial situation and begins to think about possible similarities. The speaker wonders about this possibility