Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” And Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” Comparisons And Contrasts On How The Two Poems Present The Theme Of War

Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” And

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

Comparisons And Contrasts On How The Two Poems Present The Theme Of War

Both poems, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ and ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, present the poet’s response to the theme of war. Both poets reflect on war at the time of which their poems were written and the position they had during the time of the war. Although both ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ are about battle and the death of soldiers, they portray the experience of war in different ways. As Tennyson’s poem honours and condones war, Owen’s poem is very different, as it is condemns and give a view of pain and disgrace towards war.

Tennyson’s poem celebrates the glory of war, despite the fact that, because of an error of judgement - “Someone had blundered”, six hundred soldiers were sent to their death. Owen’s poem, on the other hand, might almost have been written as a disagreement to Tennyson’s inspiring and patriotic attitude towards war. He presents the horror of senseless death in the trenches and shows us how the famous line from the Roman poet Horace, “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”- it is sweet and becoming to die for your country, is a lie.

Lord Tennyson wrote ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ after reading the description of the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 in The Times Newspaper, while Wilfred Owen wrote ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ towards the end of the First World War. Tennyson was a civilian poet, unlike Owen who was a soldier poet. Owen was an officer and often had sent men to their deaths. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ gives a personal account of what the war was really like. Even though Tennyson had not been an eyewitness to the battle he describes in his poem, his poem ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ increased the morale of the British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War and of the people in their homeland. Unlike Tennyson, Owen wrote his poem because he wanted to end the glorification of war. Owen was against the propaganda and lies that were being told about war at the time. He had personal experience of war and wanted to tell people back home the truth.

Tennyson’s poem is a celebration of the bravery of the six hundred British troops who went into battle against all odds, even though they knew that they would be killed. Tennyson creates a vivid impression of the bravery of the soldiers with the use of many verbs of action: ”Flashed all their sabres bare, Flashed as they turned in air, Sabring the gunners there”. Wilfred Owen’s poem contradicts what Tennyson’s poem is praising and it is asking us to question all the certainties that Tennyson is celebrating. The theme of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is that war and dying ...

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The heroic command in the first stanza of Tennyson’s peom, which is repeated for effect in the second stanza, causes the reader to question the pointlessness of the signal: ”Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!”. Tennyson uses gracious sounding euphemisms like “the valley of Death”, “the jaws of Death”, “the mouth of Hell” to describe the fate that awaits the men of the Light Brigade. He does not express the violent reality of the massacre that will occur.

In the opening stanza of Owen’s poem, you get a very different image of the soldiers from what you might expect from the title. People think of soldiers as smart, proud, marching, and fighting (as in Tennyson’s poem), but Owen’s picture is based on his personal experience on the battlefield. There is nothing romantic about Owen’s soldiers. They are ”Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge”.

Tennyson creates a feeling of excitement, of the nobility of warfare with his use of poetic devices, such as rhetorical repetition: “Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them”, and alliteration: “Stormed at with shot and shell, while horse and hero fell”. Tennyson celebrates the ideal of absolute obedience of the soldiers in the face of death: “Their's not to make reply, their's not to reason why, their's but to do and die”.

While Tennyson’s soldiers seem organised and strictly obedient, Owen presents the reader with a different picture of soldiers with details of what people looked like and how they felt: ”Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots but limped on, blood-shod.” The men are not really marching (if they are it is a death march). These men are so tired that they are like old women and beggars floundering through the mud. They are the opposite of Tennyson’s “Noble six hundred”.

In the final stanza of Tennyson’s poem, he creates a sense of the immortality of the soldiers’ bravery with a rhetorical question and commands: “When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! … Honour the charge they made, honour the Light Brigade, noble six hundred!”. The repetition of “the six hundred” at the end of each stanza of the poem reminds the reader of the enormous loss of life, but at the end of the poem they have became the “Noble six hundred” and are celebrated as heroes.

As Tennyson presents the soldiers as noble and glorious, Owen’s picture is not glorious at all and the very first line would shock people at in their homeland who imagined the men nobly charging forward to attack. Owen catches the mood of the scene very well. The first stanza is very slow and inactive and such words like “trudge” captures the atmosphere. He says “we” when he’s talking about the men’s actions so we are reminded that he was there.

The second stanza is very active and frantic in comparison to the first stanza. This shows the agonizing boredom the men had to put up with and then suddenly they could be killed instantly after a rush of adrenaline. “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time” The contrast of “ecstasy” and “fumbling” is an effective way of showing this. Owen shows that the soldiers seem disorganized and clumsy, which is unlike the picture Tennyson gives about his soldiers, who he describes as courageous as they rode into the “valley of Death” – “Boldly they rode and well, into the valley of Death”.

At first, the reader is relieved that the gas masks are on, but then we realize that someone hasn’t got his on yet. A man is helplessly stumbling and Owen can’t save him. This is not a glorious death. By using vivid imagery Owen gives the reader the feelings of horror and disgust that he wants them to feel at the sight of the soldier poisoned by gas: ”In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” This not only shows how the soldier is suffering, but that he is in terrible pain. The reader can imagine the soldier’s life flickering away and feel the pain the soldier must be going through, with this Owen make the reader feel pity towards the soldier. As Owen makes the reader feel pity toward the soldier, Tennyson make the reader feel a different emotion; instead of pity, Tennyson make the reader feel proud of the “noble six hundred”.

In Owen’s poem death is vividly presented as the opposite of glorious: ”the white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin”. It is as if he is filling the poem with as many ugly images as he can: “the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues”. During the man’s death it is as if you are reliving his torture.

Owen gives us a detailed picture of the war - He talks in the first person, “I saw him drowning”, and describes a person dying man, in contrast to Tennyson’s rather impersonal “six hundred”. He wants us to imagine that we are actually there on the battlefield so we get an idea of what it was like. Owen’s poem informs us that if we had had an experience of war, we would not try to glorify the war; unlike the impression Tennyson gives us in his poem.

Lord Tennyson’s attitude towards war is that it is very noble to fight and to die for your country; he tells us, in his poem, that you will be rewarded for your efforts and will be honour by the world. This is an opposite view to what Owen’s poem “Duclce et Decorum Est” describes. Owen shows his attitude towards war by showing his pity to war by describing, in his poem, images and descriptions of the soldiers’ lives during the war, facing up to death, disease and sickness.

Owens warning of war is that it can cause so much emotional and mental stress on people because of what they have to go through and from seeing their friends and family in agony bleeding to death from the war’s destruction.

Both poem have a contrasting opinion towards war, Tennyson is praising and honouring war, while Owen’s poem is showing us the gruesome reality of war. Both poems have different feelings to the main theme of the poem; in Tennyson’s poem the reader feels pride and joy for the brave soldiers, while in Owen’s poem the reader feels pity and feels the pain of the soldier who have to see their friends die right in front of them. In my opinion both poem give a good description of how real soldiers are; Owen shows the real conditions that the soldiers have to live through and Tennyson gives a good view on how the soldiers are rewarded for all their hard work.

JEFFREY NATANAUAN 4F 4 – 5