Compare and Contrast “Dulce et Decorum est” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade”

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Oliver Thomas

Compare and Contrast “Dulce et Decorum est” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade”

        Tennyson and Owen have very different views of war. In “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, Tennyson shows an attitude which focuses on duty and the army working as a team. It also portrays ‘the 600’ as brave and valiant, and tells us that they were glorious and that we should honour them because of how great they were. Tennyson’s poem skips over all the pain and suffering of the soldiers, and the fact that the charge of the light brigade was a terrible disaster. Instead, it just shows war to be an honorable and good thing to be involved in.

        In “Dulce et Decorum est” Owen tries to show the full horror of war. Instead of showing the soldiers as great heroes, he focuses on the suffering and pain of living in the trenches, and the reality of war. Owen’s poem tries to dispel any good feelings that people might have about war, and instead show it as a horrible way to die.

        The charge of the light brigade ha a galloping rhythm to it, which not only serves to create a sound picture of a horde of charging horses, but also helps to keep the poem moving over all the problems of war and the real experience that the men who were charging would have had. The speed and rhythm of the poem, therefore helps it to ‘gloss over’ all the bad things about war, and make it seem good. The first two lines help increase this ‘speed’ even more by urging the reader on with the words ‘Half a league, half a league. Half a league onward’. The ‘onward’ sounds like the spurring on of a horse, and half a league is about a mile and a half. This relatively long distance is repeated three times to add more of a feeling of movement to the poem. The repetition also shows the monotony of the horses’ hooves galloping along. The next line of the poem, line 3, refers to the ‘valley of death’. A valley of death is mentioned in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. By making a reference to it in his poem, Tennyson raises the participants in the charge to a higher level than everyone else and makes them seem very important.

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        The fourth line in the first stanza of Tennyson’s poem,  ‘Rode the six hundred’ does two things. Firstly, it treats the light brigade as one unit, and serves to make us forget that each person in the light brigade is an individual, and that each person that will die probably has a family for whom the death of their relative will cause a lot of grief. Secondly, the ‘Rode’ keeps up the fast pace of the poem and is another reminder that the horses are still charging along. Line five and line six, ‘Forward the light brigade! Charge for the ...

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