Tennyson wanted to get his feelings of the heroism of war across through his poem. Tennyson uses a fast pace through the poem. He is trying to achieve the effect that the men don’t give up.
‘…Half a league… half a league…’
This sets a dactylic rhythm and creates an image of horses galloping and that the men carry on going forward and never give up.
All through the poem the phrase:
‘…Rode the six hundred…’
Is repeated to keep the image of the men riding boldly forward even though they knew they were riding to their deaths.
Tennyson has used repetition throughout the poem, he decided to do this mainly to create a dactylic pace and to emphasise the fact that the men don’t give up, which shows us the admiration he feels for them.
‘…Cannon…. cannon…. cannon…’
This is highlighting the fact that the soldiers are surrounded and there is no escape.
This compared with Owens poem is different as Owen uses strong metaphors and a lot of description throughout his poem.
In this poem there are two main themes, the first main theme is death. Tennyson does not choose to talk about the death of individuals or give gruesome details, as it will ruin his image of war. The one time he does emphasise it is when all he uses is a capital letter.
‘…Valleys of Death…’
He does this, as he wants war to be honourable and not horrific, whereas, Owen has only one thing in mind when writing about war, which is to make it as horrific and realistic as possible.
The second main theme is bravery, Tennyson shows this by using a lot of repetition, which creates an image of men not giving up as we have discussed before.
Tennyson uses onomatopoeia to create realism.
‘…Volleyed and thundered…’
This is to show the sounds of the guns, he wanted to make us think about how the guns sounded so that we get images in our head.
The last stanza is full of admiration for the men and the battle he uses this to conclude his poem. He is thinking that if he fills our heads with admiration and glory then maybe we’ll forget about the disgusting parts of war, he masks the fact that the soldiers were slaughtered needlessly.
Wilfred Owen in many ways typifies the war poet, before the war he had lived a rather sheltered existence working as a private tutor and assistant to a country vicar. Wilfred Owens poetry, which he wrote before war, was full of description and about very little. The war transformed his poetry, giving it a new power. Owen wrote Dulce et Decorum Est in the 1950s. Owen is probably the most well known of war poets as he fought and died in the war so he was writing from experience.
Dulce et decorum Est was set during the First World War. This war was fought on many fronts; this poem focuses on the trenches. There was artillery firing for 48 hours at times. They used machine guns, gas attacks and air strikes. This war was far more advanced then the Charge of the Light Brigades.
Wilfred Owen in his poem is asking us to question all the certainties that Tennyson is celebrating. The theme of Dulce et decorum Est is that dying for ones country is not at all glorious. This message is echoed throughout the poem from the first line to the last.
The attitudes towards war at this time were much more realistic than those in the other poem. There were graphic descriptions:
‘…Limped on blood-shod… froth corrupted lungs…’
As Owen was actually at war he had first hand experience and much more emotion was involved. He was describing what actually happened. It associates war with hell. But in the Charge of the Light Brigades they rewarded the bravery of the men for marching into hell, in this poem a simile is used to describe a mans face.
‘…His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin…’
He thought of the soldiers as innocent, decent men, not heroes as described in Tennyson’s poem.
The realities of war in this poem are very obvious; the first stanza starts off describing the soldiers as scruffy and dirty
‘…Old beggars…’
And then goes on to say that they could barely walk:
‘…Knock kneed…’
This is alliteration and causes us to notice these words more than others; we get a picture in our head of the soldiers.
‘…Coughing like hags…’
Refers to the gas by using a simile. This is a lot more detail than Tennysons poem, as Tennyson prefers to stay clear of anything as real as this. This puts the whole image of the soldiers in our minds, it finishes it off as we can just imagine them in our head like old people.
‘…They rode back. But not the six hundred…’
That was about as bad as Tennyson’s poem got.
In the second and third stanza destruction and horror are also shown not destruction of the land but of the bodies:
‘…White eyes writhing on his face…’
It talks of a man who had not put on his gas mask, this language is so horrific to the reader as this isn’t like a normal situation and they would be horrified to read that they are dying.
‘…Someone was still yelling out and stumbling…’
It carries on-
‘…He plunges at me, guttering, choking, and drowning…’
He uses onomatopoeia again to make us imagine what it looks like and picture it in our head.
Wilfred Owen is aiming his last four lines at us, as he doesn’t want us to tell the story of war to children and portray it as being glorious and heroic, because he knows what it is really like.
The last two lines emphasise on the title:
‘…The old lie: Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori…’
It is sweet and honourable to die for ones country, he is telling us from experience that it is not sweet and honourable to die for ones country.
The myth of war in this poem clearly doesn’t exist. There was no glory in watching your pals die before eyes
‘…He plunges at me, choking, drowning…’
The poem says-
‘…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 fir some desperate glory…the old lie…’
This basically means that if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t tell kids all the same old rubbish. In this paragraph there is a lot of descriptive language, there is onomatopoeia, this all creates realism and adds horrifying thoughts, it creates an image in your head and you can’t get rid of it which makes this poem very powerful.
That whole paragraph goes directly against this line from the Charge of the Light Brigade-
‘…Honour the charge they made…honour the light brigade…’
Wilfred Owen is trying to get the message across that war is horrific and him being there he would know best.
The poems are similar in that they both rhyme, but they are different because Owen’s poem has regular and Tennyson’s has irregular. Another difference is rhythm. In Dulce Et Decorum Est a rhythm is hard to detect, possibly slow (men trudging) then speeding up (gas, gas). But in The Charge Of The Light Brigade there is a regular rhythm (horses galloping). In both poems the commands are spoken by a person – gas, gas quick boys and Forward the light brigade. One other similarity is that they both compare war to other things (simile) – mouth of hell and Devil sick of sin.
Dulce et Decorum est was a very enjoyable poem compared to charge of the light brigades, it was realistic and showed what really happened in war whereas charge of the light brigades showed was as being glorious and a good thing to go through with. There was lots of descriptive language. Strong metaphors, similes and descriptive language gave it realism.
Wilfred Owen was successful at showing the true realities of war probably because he was there and had experienced what it was like.