"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is a poem written thanks to the informative newspaper reports by a journalist for the Times. W.H. Russell's reports on the Crimean War were so much of an inspiration to Alfred Tennyson that he wrote a poem based on them.
As Britain and France began to trust Russia less and less, war broke out in the Crimea in 1854. The part of the battle which this poem is based on is the point where the British cavalry commander mistook his orders to retake some guns held by the Russians. He, instead, told the troops to charge a main Russian position. The 600 men who were asked to do this followed their orders but most of the men did not not make it back. The actions of these men are seen by some as heroic, while others believe that these men were foolish to enter into this situation when they knew it was a bad idea.
In Dulce et Decorum est the descriptions were excellent. The most obvious example of this for me is after the soldier has inhaled the gas. The line "He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning" is a great way of describing the several senses the man was feeling all a once. The author of the poem is attempting to draw on our own experiences by using circumstances that we have probably experienced. Lots of us have almost drowned, so using the word "drowning" allows us to relate to what the man is feeling. We can almost imagine what the man was feeling by this excellent piece of descriptive writing. We can see in our minds the man coughing up froth just by reading the line "Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,".
Wilfred Owen makes use of some unusual lexical choices. The word "Blood-shod" is an example of this. Blood-shod is not an official English word as it cannot be found in an English Dictionary, but Owen has taken the words blood-shed and blood-shot and combined them to make a word. Blood-shed due to the fighting that was taking place and blood-shot because the soldiers were so tired that their eyes were most likely blood-shot. I understand that they were tired, because Owen used the line, "Drunk with fatigue" which means that the soldiers were so tired that they appeared to be drunk, even though they were not.
Alliteration plays a part in this poem, too. The line "And watch the white eyes writhing in his face" allows good description while using alliteration, which makes a line stand out if used correctly.
There were plenty of similes used in this poem. Examples would be: "like old beggars", "Obscene as cancer", "And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime..." and bitter as the cud". They all help to add extra description to the poem.
One line which particularly took my eye was, "If in some smothering dreams you too could pace". Smothering dreams is an extremely unusual collocation. You would not usually find those two words together in a sentence, but here they are together.
In the Charge of the Light Brigade, the first thing I noticed while reading was that there were a lot of repetitions. The third and fifth stanzas have the same beginning three lines, other than a one word difference. Those lines make me think of a man dodging between cannons because he is being fired at from all angles. It makes me realise what a position the men were in, because they had nowhere to go. The cannons were everywhere and unevitably they would die.
The last line of each stanza refrains, as it mentions something about the 600 hundred people who charged the Russians (it was actually more than 600, but would it really have sounded as good if the last line was "Rode the six-hundred and thirty"?).
Tennyson uses militant language by using words such as, "shells" and "gunners". This brought added realism to the poem. If he had simply said, "bullets" and "soldiers", the poem may have become too boring because it would not have been adapted to the setting and theme.
There seems to be a rhythm to this poem. It is a fast rhythm and is very similar to the rhythm of horses galloping. The men fought on horseback, so it adds extra realism in yet another way.
The men could not make their own decisions and had to do as they were told. "Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die" means that they had their duties to do and they were not in a position to ask if it were a wise thing to do. All they could do was do as they were told and die. They were treated in the sort of way a robot or puppet would be treated.
Much like Owen, Tennyson uses a little alliteration. "Stormed at with shot and shell" has lots of use of words beginning with the letter "s". This line is also onomatopoeic, because the men didn't literally storm to the Russians, but the effect is there.
The line, "While horse and hero fell," is another example of alliteration, with the letter "h" being used twice. This line also gives the man and his horse equal importance, when the man would be considered more important in real-life. He is, in a way, de-humanised, because he is being compared with an animal, not human.
Although I personally enjoyed the Charge of the Light Brigade more because of its fast rhythm, I believe that Dulce et Decorum est was the mor effective poem because it had more description and allowed you to relate to the poet's feelings and the soldier who died's feelings more effectively. It also concentrated on one man more, so we got more emotionally involved.
