I have always been struck by Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est." The way it sounds when it's read, the biting tone, and the description of content always grab my attention. When reading for class today though, I was really intrigued by the use of pronouns. Specifically, the use of pronouns in the last stanza. Throughout the rest of the poem we know that "we" means the soldiers with the speaker and that "he" is the soldier that did not get his gas mask on in time. However, the ending stanza switches, and the speaker is talking to "you": 

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.

And, for the first time, I wondered who "you" is. Is the speaker directing this towards the reader, meaning that he is hoping that no reader will perpetuate this lie? Or is there a more specific you that he is talking to? It seems it could be both, especially thinking about the teachers within All Quiet on the Western Front that pressure the students into thinking war is the best option for them, or even thinking about the White Feather campaigns. Either way, the biting, accusatory way the poem is written makes both possible and effective.