Compare and contrast the presentation of war in Wilfred Owen's Dulce et decorum est and Anthem for doomed youth to Tennyson's The charge of the Light Brigade.

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Nkechi Wagbaranta

Compare and contrast the presentation of war in Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et decorum est and Anthem for doomed youth to Tennyson’s The charge of the Light Brigade.

  • Pay attention to language, structure and the writer’s purpose in presenting war as they have.

Dulce et decorum est and Anthem for doomed youth were written by a soldier called Wilfred Owen during the First World War. Dulce et decorum est is about war and the circumstances soldiers who fought in it had to face, the writer wrote the poem based on his own experience of the war.  It was first published in 1921.  Anthem for doomed youth was written in (year) with assistance from Wilfred Owen’s fellow soldier Siegrfried Sasson while Owen was being treated in hospital as a result of an injury he obtained in war.  By comparison Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate, wrote The charge of the Light Brigade in 1964.  It was written subsequent to the reading of WH Russell’s report on the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.

            Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et decorum est consists of twenty-eight lines.  These lines are divided into three main stanzas, each with eight to twelve lines.  

The second stanza of Dulce et decorum est is broken further into two parts, one with six lines and the other with two making eight lines altogether.  The writer did this in order to create effect by making the reader pause before going to the second part of the stanza.  

              Anthem for doomed youth can be easily distinguished from most of works of Owen, as it is sonnet.  Since sonnets are normally for love poems, there is some irony in the use of a sonnet in Anthem for doomed youth, which is a poem about war.  Through the style of the poem Owen shows the readers the further irony in what was experienced by the soldiers who died ‘as cattle’ as a result of their patriotism.  The fourteen lines of Anthem for doomed youth are divided into two stanzas - the first an octet and the second a sestet.  

            The charge of the Light Brigade has a total of thirty-three lines, which are split into six stanzas of six to eleven lines each.  Lord Tennyson did this in order to build a narrative structure, which tells of stages of the charge.

            There is no definite rhyming pattern in The charge of the Light Brigade although it has a strong use of rhymes, most of it rhymes are half rhymes.  Lord Tennyson did this by replacing the word Brigade with words like ‘Them’ and ‘The six hundred’ to prevent creating definite rhyming pattern.  This creates a half rhyming scheme, which gives a galloping pace to suit the subject.

            Anthem for doomed youth has an alternate rhyming pattern, which forms two quatrains of abab and cdcd in the first stanza.  This pattern is similar to that of Dulce et decorum est. In the second stanza the first four lines form a rhyming couplet of effe, the ninth and twelfth stanza rhyme while the tenth and eleventh line rhyme.

             Dulce et decorum est has a strong rhyming pattern of abab, cdcd for every stanza.  The impact of the rhyming pattern is reduced while the poem is being read due to the run on lines which makes the poem seem more like prose.  

              The rhythm of Dulce et decorum est shows the pace at which the writer intended the poem to be read by its readers.  This could be seen in the variation of the words and phrases in the poem.  Stanzas one and three contain a lot of long words and phrases with more than one syllable, and frequent punctuations which makes the reader read the stanzas slowly for example ‘knock-kneed, coughing like hags…sludge’ from stanza one and ‘Of vile, incurable…tongues’ from stanza three.  While stanza two has short words, which are mainly monosyllables, short phrases with less punctuation than the other stanzas, increasing the pace at which the stanza is read at for example ‘As under the green sea’.

              Anthem for doomed youth has a similar rhyming pattern to Dulce et decorum est.  Its rhythm shows how Wilfred Owen wanted the poem to be read.  Initially the poem has a fast pace but as the reader goes on the pace decelerates and finally draw to a very ‘slow’, and sober close.

            Wilfred Owens Dulce et decorum est and Anthem for doomed youth are in iambic pentameter. For example the rhetorical question in stanza one of Anthem for doomed youth  ‘What passing bells for those who die as cattle’, which was answered in the rest of the stanza. Although line four of Dulce et decorum est has an extra unstressed syllable ‘and’ this shows that they both have a regular metre.

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             The metre of The charge of the Light Brigade is regular.  It uses short words and lines and very little punctuation.  This feature allows the lines to be read quicker because the reader doesn’t have to pause as many times as he or she would have had to if for instance the poem had more punctuation.   The writer mimics the sound of galloping horses by putting one long syllable after two short ones for example ‘Half a league’ this dactylic feet also speeds up the pace at which the poem is read through excitement.

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