The other thing that suggests that the poet wasn’t near the battlefield is that he says that the men did not question what was happening, “Their’s not to reason why”. But I am sure that in real life some of the men would have asked what they were doing. The other thing that this poem does not do is it doesn’t show the suffering that the men had to go through. Instead it tries to tell us how the men were all brave and heroic wanting to fight “Boldly they rode and well”.
The other thing that makes this poem very different from the second one is the date because “The charge of the Light Brigade” was set around 1854 and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” was set around 1914. This may be one of the factors that make the two poems so different. This poem also shows us how the army structure back then wasn’t very good because the messages did not come through properly, this lead to the “Defeat of the Noble 600”.
The poet of the “Charge of the Light Brigade” tries to convey the sense of war in a way that is kind to the general population. I think that he is trying to hide the fact that so many young and brave soldiers died for their county when they didn’t have to at all. Also he is trying to do this so that the army of the time didn’t get a bad reputation for itself by killing innocent young men.
In the second poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” the poet does not want to say that war is sweet and heroic, but he wants to show the people how the war really was. When the poet was in hospital he wrote a letter to his mother saying “I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last 4 days. I have suffered the 7th hell.” This shows how the poet wanted to show the world the “real war”, hiding nothing.
Cont…
In the first stanza the poet tells us how the men are so injured and shell shocked that they have been made useless, he says, “All went Lame, all went Blind.” This is almost the total opposite of what the poet of the charge of the Light Brigade tells us about war, because even after and during the men being shelled they all fought strongly.
The poet also tells us how the men have not had any sleep because they have been fighting so long and are so tired they “Marched in their sleep”. As far as we can gather the men in the “Charge of the Light Brigade” poem are bright and awake and ready for action. However, in reality I don’t think that this was true, because the war had been going for some time by then.
Also the poet tries to get across the fact the equipment that the army had wasn’t good enough for the job. In the second stanza the poet tells us about the gas and how one of the men couldn’t get his gas mask on in time, “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”. But when you compare this to the other poem, all of the men seemed to have their equipment and their rifles in perfect working order, but I don’t think that this would have been true.
In poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” the men had to go through the bombardment of gas and explosive shells, while in the “Charge of the light Brigade” the men had to endure the barrage of artillery fire for a short time, while they were actually in the charge. The shells in Lord Tennyson’s days were not as explosive or deadly as the ones in “Dulce Et Decorum Est.”
The one major difference that the two poems have is that in the “Dulce Et Decorum Est” poem there is a phrase at the beginning and at the end, which is in Latin and translates to:
“It is sweet and right to die for ones country”
What the poet tries to say is that this is totally wrong and is a lie. I think that this phrase was originally made up so that all of the men who went into war were not afraid of dying for their country, which would mean that more men would voluntarily join the army and fight for their country. In conclusion Owen is trying to suggest that war is an Evil thing.
In the “Charge of the Light Brigade” poem the poet tries to say a totally opposite thing to the poet of “Dulce Et Decorum Est” because he tries to emphasize the glory of dying for ones country and how it was a glorious battle but it was not, it was a bloody death “To the noble 600”. The reason for the difference may be because that “The Charge of the Light Brigade” poem was written much earlier than the “Dulce Et Decorum Est” poem and as time has gone on I think the people have changed their views on war and the general consensus is that it is better to preserve life than it is to destroy it.