The Foreign Plan

2) Write the definitions of all of the words in the poem that you don’t know.

Beggars

1. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori : it is sweet and right to die for your country.

2. Flares: rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets

3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest

4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air

5. Outstripped - outpaced

6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells

Lime - a substance which can burn live tissue

11. Guttering - flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter,( referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man).

12. Cud - regurgitated grass that cows chew,

13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm

14. ardent - keen

3) When was this poem thought to have been written?

It was thought to have been written between 8 October 1917 and March, 1918

4) What does the writer of the poem have nightmares about now?

Nightmares about his experience in the First World War.

Level 2: Inferential:

1) What is the poem’s main idea, i.e. what is it about?

The poem's main idea is the experiences of a soldier in the war/ trenches. As it points out different phases that soldiers are known to have experienced in the war and describes the traumatic and inhumane aspects of it.

2) a) List six similes and two metaphors in the poem.

Similes:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

Obscene as cancer,

bitter as the cud

Metaphor:

All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering

b) Choose two similes and one metaphor and write what effect they have on