Dulce et Decorum Est and The Charge of the Light Brigade

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.

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

challenge to Tennyson´s rousing and jingoistic sentiments. He presents

the horror of senseless death in the trenches and shows us how the

famous line from the Roman poet Horace, 'it is sweet and becoming to

die for your country´, is a lie.

We are told that Tennyson wrote 'Light Brigade´ in a few minutes after

reading the description in The Times of the Battle of Balaclava in

1854. He was a civilian poet, as opposed to a soldier poet like Owen.

His poem 'Light Brigade´ increased the morale of the British soldiers

fighting in the Crimean War and of the people at home, but Tennyson

had not been an eyewitness to the battle he describes.

Wilfred Owen wrote 'Dulce´ towards the end of the First World War. He

was killed in action a week before the war ended in 1918. He wanted to

end the glorification of war. Owen was against the propaganda and lies

that were being told at the time. He had first-hand experience of war

and wanted to tell people back at home the truth. Owen was an officer

and often had to send men to their deaths and 'Dulce´ gives a personal

account of what the war was like. Many patriotic poems had been

written at the time. Owen knew that they lied..

Tennyson´s poem is a celebration of the bravery of the six hundred

British troops who went into battle against all odds, even though the...

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...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 one 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. This poem is the closest we will get to experiencing

such atrocities and if we had, Owen tells us in the final lines, then

we would not try to glorify the war any more. In the Preface to his

poems, published after his death, Owen wrote, 'All a poet can do today

is warn. That is why true poets must be truthful´. This why he

criticizes 'the high zest´ that some people have for 'the old Lie´ of

the glory of war, and why I think that 'Dulce´ is the more powerful

poem of the two.