"Dulce e Decorum est" by Wilfred Owen, "Suicide In the Trenches" by Siegfried Sassoon and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Tennyson

Another thing that affects the way that the writers writes is the audience they are writing to. This will affect the way the poem is written, as the writer will try and complement the readers good opinions if writing positively. On the other hand the writer will use shock tactics like Sassoon if they are dealing with the subject of war in a negative manner.

Tennyson was writing pro war for middle class Englishman. Owen is writing anti war to enlighten the British people of the plight that the soldiers are in. Lastly Sassoon was writing about war pessimistically and trying to enlighten the government to take action. The reason that different writers might take a different stance of what Britain should be doing in war, links in with the time period that it was wrote in.

Tennyson is writing at a time when two great empires (Ottoman and British) are colliding head to head, and describes how the Light Brigade still fights on heroically even though it is facing imminent death. By taking this stance on war Tennyson would be showing his readers that the British Empire is strong and that war is good for it. He also likens war to an upper class sport. By doing this, he is getting schoolboys to have a good picture of war, and also getting other readers to be more optimistic, and supportive of what Britain is defending.

Owen though was brought up in a different time period with a less privileged background. This would of meant that his morals would have been different to Tennysons. Owen would have been more worried about his own life, and focuses in on how inadequate most men fighting were. He uses the word "lie" a lot during the poem and this shows that he feels very strongly that the men fighting are no ample enough for the job. By using imagery he strongly gets across his points, that the war is killing innocent men. He uses poignant images like "old beggars", "hags" and " "haunting" to show that the war is ghastly in every way.

Sassoon born in to a wealthy jewish family, was writing anti-war as well. Sassoon met Owen in a hospital and influenced him in his writing and also helped him to write some of his poetry. Sassoon was very innocent when he went into the war and due to this it made his poetry all the more harsh and brutal. Sassoon is writing anti-war as he does not agree with the way that the government portray the war. Sassoon was innocent going into the war and due to the shock that he found, he used this in "Suicide In The Trenches" to make more people realise what was really going on.

The way that different writers write is directly linked to the background they have mixed in with there experiences of war. Tennyson who never experienced war and enjoyed the idea of a British Empire wrote pro war. Sassoon who was shocked at what he saw when he went to war, wrote a poem which used shock to get across a anti war stance. Owen was inadequate to fight a war and writes about how the British army was inadequate against the German gas attacks.

The methods they use in there poems are also related to there background and how well educated they are. Tennyson was poet laureate and so a well respected poet. Owen was not well educated but had help from Sassoon to write a well structured poem. Sassoon like Tennyson was well educated so managed to use a different opinion from Tennyson but still in a good structure.

Tennyson emphasises a lot on the heroism of the soldiers during his poem.In the face of overwhelming odds and horror they are still described as riding "boldly". He uses metaphors to get across his point in a more theatrical way "Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell". This language is very simple yet at the same time manages to be very dramatic. Personification is used to make the threat seem even more menacing. The inevitability of the situation is emphasised, there is no way they will all come out of this alive. Tennyson uses techniques like this so he can show what is good about war. By making the heroism the central point the is trying to encourage people to be pro war.

To try and steer clear from the fact that there is imminent death the soldiers are referred to collectively as the "six hundred." this is done because the emphasis is on the heroism of the brigade as a whole, not the individual sacrifices made. Tennyson uses these kind of methods throughout his poem so to emphasise the good points of war and glaze over the bad points.

This is contrast to Owen who focuses solely on the dreadful points of war. Owen is challenging the glamorised image of war by implying that the media has been lying and painting a more tender picture to get more people to join up. The line "Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori" (It is sweet and honourable to die for your country) is described as a lie by Owen. By calling it a lie, it is a blunt attack at the way the war as been portrayed. Owen is trying to get across the fact that the war is unbearable so it should be described as horrendous and not given more glamour just to make more people join up to the army.

The techniques Owen uses to do this are that he hurls the pain of World War One into the readers faces. Straight away in the first line Owen gives us a dramatic way of tiredness by picturing "old beggars under sacks". This tells us these men are battle weary, but also gives us a hint that they are scared of what is ahead for them. Using graphic terms such as "blood-shod", Owen doesn't merely tell us of the hell of war, he shows us by using imagery like this.

Owens poem isn't as well structured as Tennysons or Sassoon's but he still manages to get across his stance on war. This teaches us that although Owen came from a different background then the other two writers he still manages to get across his anti-war stance. Owen came from the same period as Siegfried Sassoon as they both served in World War One. Both poets write anti war as they both experienced the full face of warfare. This shows that writers from the World War One period had a generally negative stance towards war as they could not see the logic in ordinary people fighting.

Sassoon criticises the British public in his poem by saying they don know what truly goes on in war. He describes how "they pray" that they will "never know the hell where youth and laughter go". By saying these lines it shows that Sassoon feels strongly that the war is wrong. In the second stanza he shocks the reader by saying "he put a bullet through his brain". As the reader reads this line it comes as a shock due to the lines beforehand. Sassoon describes how the boy "whistled" with a "lark" about him. When Sassoon kills him off so quickly it makes the people reading how appalling the war can be.

Sassoon uses a simple A-A-B-B rhyming pattern, by doing this gets across the shock more as it is in an upbeat tone. Sassoon also uses some derogatory terms to describe the situation. Words and phrases such as "empty joy", "lonesome boy" "cowed and glum" and " crumps and lice" contrast even further to the upbeat form of the poem. Sassoon writes in this way due to his background. He was in an upbeat mood as were most soldiers who joined up to fight. When he arrived though he got shocked at what he saw and so put this across in his poem. During World War One many horrific things happened and writers from this period like Owen and Sassoon wrote about how awful it was.

In conclusion I have learnt that writers from different periods deal with the subject in different ways according to there background and experience. Tennyson lived without having to fight a war and during the period he was alive he got news back from around the world of great conquests of the British army. The Crimean War didn't change history, but still Britain suffered a terrible loss of men. Tennyson and the rest of Britain was not used to this, so Tennyson wrote about the subject of war in a very positive way.

Owen and Sassoon experienced the great war and saw the terrible losses first hand. They instead of showing how Britain was doing well, they wrote about how people were dying innocently. In the period Owen and Sassoon were writing in, Britain faced an uncertain future and Owens and Sassoon's poem complement this aspect of life. They both try to get across the truth and reality in there poems. The World War One period made writers like Sassoon and Owen write in this style. Unlike Tennyson they put across all the negative aspects and stuck close to the point. Although Britain won World War One writers from this period wrote in a negative manner.