Alfred Lord Tennyson - Discuss the poets' different attitudes to war, as presented in The Charge Of The Light Brigade and Exposure

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Lizzy Archer

Discuss the poets’ different attitudes to war, as presented in The Charge Of The Light Brigade and Exposure 

A more experienced poet known as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the Charge Of The Light Brigade. He was born in 1809 and died of old age in 1892. He wrote The Charge Of The Light Brigade in response to a Newspaper Report from the Times, which was written by W.H.Russel, so his understanding of the war was from second hand knowledge, he was removed from the action. Unlike Wilfred Owen, who wrote Exposure. Owen was born in 1893 and died at a very young age in 1918. The reason for his young death was, he was a participant in the war and died during battle, so his was writing from his own experiences. Although Owen was a less experienced writer, his poems only really became known after his death, as he had a less authorative voice.

        The main similarities between the two poems is that they are both writing about wars, however both wars are from a different time and so are fought in completely different ways. Tennyson wrote The Charge Of The Light Brigade about the Crimean war, which was originally between France and Russia but Britain joined because she worried about her security. The Crimean war was fought on horseback, which meant that it would be over fairly quickly. I think this because it would have been one charge, this battle would then have gone on until all the soldiers in one side were injured or dead. He was very far removed from the action, as he didn’t even witness the war, so his poem written is third hand. Where as Owen wrote Exposure from first hand experience. For these reasons I may be able to place more value on Wilfred Owen’s poem. The First World War was fought over several years and the soldiers spent a lot of that time in trenches.  

The mood, tone and language in each poem are completely different from the other. In The Charge Of The Light Brigade the mood is very light and gives the feeling that all the soldiers, were excited about what they were doing. This is helped by the fact that Tennyson doesn’t go into the atrocities of the war, instead writing of “When horse and hero fell”. Here he is basically saying that they have been shot down, but the way Tennyson puts it, it’s like it’s not that dramatic, when it is. In The Charge Of The Light Brigade it doesn’t really distinguish those soldiers that died in battle and those that lived, “Then they rode back, but not the six hundred”. This is what I think plays a big part in making the mood of the poem so light, as it avoids death, which is upsetting. Where as in Exposure the mood is very depressing and dismal as Owen is constantly saying how the soldiers were being attacked in different ways. He mentions the weather attacking them, which can be seen from “in the merciless iced winds that knive us”. As well as things like the barbed wire in front of the enemies trenches, “Like twitching agonies of men amongst its brambles”. However the poem doesn’t mention soldiers attacking them, which may indicate that the weather and other things were more threatening and chilling, then the enemy. In Exposure Owen speaks of the soldiers’ pain and this is what I think makes the poem so disheartening to read, because he is trying to show how war causes suffering and reduces the soldiers. Unlike Tennyson who is trying to honour and glorify the soldiers and so making the poem seem more pleasant. However in some ways the poems are similar as the language used indicates that poets generalise and universalise all the men in the war.

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The Charge Of The Light Brigade is a lot more structured then Exposure. This is because in Tennyson’s poem he talks about the different stages of the battle, where as Owen doesn’t really mention battle, it’s more about the soldiers’ suffering. In The Charge Of The Light Brigade Tennyson goes through each stage of the battle, within each individual stanza. So in the first stanza the soldiers have been ordered to start their charge. The second stanza is quite an important part of the poem, as we discover that the soldiers had been given the wrong order. However because they are ...

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