War Poetry

Randy Hartman

Professor Bodie

ENC 1102

23 March 2015

The Extremes of War

Over time, poetry’s tone and message has developed to either follow, or in some cases, change the attitudes of the time periods in which it was written. Two war poems written sixty three years apart by two very different men are two of the most well-known and best examples of war poetry ever produced. The two poems, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Battle of the Light Brigade” written in 1854, and Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” written in 1917, convey to the reader the great divide among the attitudes of those people during those particular times about war and what it means to fight and die in a war. The poems do, in fact, share the common theme of war, but because of the way the poets use vivid language, symbols, allusion, and distinct visual imagery, Tennyson is able to lift up and memorialize the men who fought; Owen, in stark contrast conveys the absolute horror and senselessness, which is war.

The tones and language of the poems of Wilfred Owen soldier/ poet of “Dulce” were shaped while he fought and died for king and country on the battle fields of France. The fact that his poetry was hardened by battle, is evident in the words of his preface to his collection, “My subject is the pity of War… The Poetry is in the pity” (Owen Preface). His experiences did lead to an anti-war sentiment that is the overwhelming tone of his poetry. In “Dulce” the reader senses the tone of the poem within the first two lines as he uses vivid language to describe the men as “old beggars and hags”; these though are young men in the prime of their lives. The men have instead been beaten down by the horrors of war (1-2). The very cadence of the verse is slow and hard to start, Owen uses “cursed” as a verb to depict how slow the movement was “we cursed though sludge,” (2). With just a few marvelously placed words in the first two lines, he is able to set the tone for the rest of the...