Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” continues the idea of writing about war as though it is an exciting adventure. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” was written during the Crimean war. It is about a military blunder, where six hundred men were sent to charge straight into gunfire when a British Calvary Commander mistook his orders to retake some guns held by the Russians. Instead he told his men to charge at the main Russian position at the head of a valley bristling with artillery. Lord Tennyson was the poet Laureate at the time of the Crimean war, but did not actually witness any fighting. He wrote the poem as a response to an account of the incident published in The Times. Being the poet Laureate, it could be argued that Tennyson was trying to underplay the completely unnecessary death of so many men. In this way, his poem becomes political. He is defending the establishment where men were told, when they joined the army and sent to die, that they would die heroically, not as fools, despite being sent to the front line by generals far from the danger. On top of this, Tennyson was not in the war, he was in Britain during the campaign, and therefore he relied solely on accounts from soldiers, most likely high-ranking officers, and on his imagination to write the poem. This is reflected in his view of war. He does not consider the dreadful realities of war, only the honour and bravery.
The images created in this poem are very majestic and noble. The mood is very glorious and heroic. The first image created is “the valley of Death”. Death here has a capital D, suggesting that Tennyson here is personifying “Death” and he assumes a human form such as the “grim reaper.” If this is the case, not only does it imply that the soldiers will die a quick, painless death when they enter the valley, at the hands of “Death”, but also, with “Death” being a person, he can only seize one person at a time, so many of the soldiers will not die. On top of this, this image makes the poem more exciting. These same features indicated by “the jaws of Death” and “the mouth of Hell”. What makes this heroic and gallant is that the soldiers rode boldly into “the valley of Death”, and still some managed to return.. It is as if they were cheating or outrunning “Death”.
A heroic scene is also created when the general says: “Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!” This conjures images of heroes on horseback, charging fearlessly towards the guns, when they know they may be killed. These elements of fearlessness and danger add thrill and romance to the poem. It would appeal to a young person, and perhaps encourage them to join the army. The way the soldiers carry on towards the guns when they know of the danger also seems courageous and daring. This is emphasised by phrases such as “Boldly they rode and well.” The lines, “Their’s not to make reply, Their’s not to reason why, Their’s but to do and die”, emphasises the discipline held by the men as they charged without question.
Verse four is full of excitement and bravery. Colour is used when the soldiers, “Flashed all their sabres bare”. This gives the impression of a very well equipped, smart, clean and impressive army and the verse tries to convey the power and might of the Light Brigade. The soldiers “Flashed as they turned in air.” This suggests that they were so powerful and energetic that they were almost flying. The verse also points to a clean, easy victory for the mighty Light Brigade, “Charging an army, while all the world wondered”. By reminding the reader that the Light Brigade charged at a whole army, and broke right through their lines, it makes it more courageous and brave, than reckless, as they succeeded. They are further made heroes by the fact that they killed the hated enemy, “Cossack and Russian, Reeled from the sabre stroke.” Tennyson does not realistically show the pain of the people killed, the blood and the anguish and agony both the enemy and the Light Brigade died in. He describes a very clean, efficient annihilation of the enemy.
The fifth verse emphasises again the total destruction that the “Light Brigade” faced and yet although there was
“Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them”,
“They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of death”.
This is underlining how that these men were heroes and that those who had survived had come through an adventure. The sixth verse, answering the rhetorical question, “When can their glory fade?” calls for the reader to “Honour the charge they made, Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred!” These last lines of the poem sum up the message comes across throughout the whole poem. These men were in Tennyson’s eyes glorious and though those who still survived had only accomplished the saving of their own eyes, such men were worthy of the greatest respect.
The words in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” sound very soft, for instance: “half”, “forward”, “Volleyed”, “Reeled”, “Sabring” and “honour.” This makes the poem all the more euphemistic, and less shocking. It is also easier to read, so the pace is speeded up. The pace at which the “The Charge of the Light Brigade read is very important. The reading of the poem is speeded up by the rhyming scheme, which allows the lines to be read quicker. The rhythm of the lines is also important. There are two short syllables followed by one long one. This emulates the gallop of horses, thus speeding up the pace. It is called a dactyl. The short words and short lines are also an important part in speeding up the poem and the action. We can see that there is little punctuation in the poem, which ensures the pace, is not impeded. This conveys excitement at the men’s bravery.
Tennyson’s method is very different from that of Wilfred Owen. Although recording a military blunder, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” portrays the popular image of the time, that death when encountered in battle is a glorious thing. As I have already said, Tennyson was portraying war in a very romanticised way. In his account, there is none of the gory realistic details of war, which as we will see, are a prominent characteristic in Wilfred Owens’s poems.
By the time the “Great War” of 1914 to 1918 occurred, a great shift had occurred in the portrayal of war. This was partly due to the increase of media coverage, but the main reason was that poets such as Wilfred were actually speaking from experience. Wilfred Owen was an English man who was teaching English in France when the First World War began. He returned to England and joined the army and was a junior officer at the battle of the Somme. He was sent to a military hospital in Edinburgh when suffering from trench fever and concussion and it was here he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon who persuaded him to write poetry about the war. In 1918, Owen rejoined his regiment and he was killed a week before the armistice. His aim of his poetry is best summed up in his own words. “Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My Subject is War, and the Pity of War, The Poetry is in the Pity.” Owen’s poetry describes as soldier’s life in war with grim realism and is in complete contrast with the poetry of the pre 1900’s.
The first of Wilfred Owen’s poems which I will look at is “Dulce et Decorum est”. The title is in Latin, which would suggest that this poem was written for well educated people who would realise that it was start of the phrase, “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori”. This literally means as I have mentioned in my introduction, “It is a lovely and honourable thing; to die for one’s country”. This title would suggest that the poem is going to portray war in a glorious manner but this assumption is far from the truth. The poem completely destroys the myth of young men fighting for England and dying in glory.
The first stanza describes how the soldiers are returning to their billets. Owen uses a slow halting rhythm to suggest how much pain and misery the soldiers are encountering and to imitate how slow the men are moving. All the things that they are carrying weigh down the soldiers, perhaps they are even weighed down by the expectation of their country. Verse one tells us a lot about the condition, both physically and mentally, of the men and it gives us an idea of the appalling conditions! He portrays this by his use of similes, metaphors and vocabulary. He uses similes such as, “Bent double, like hags”, comparing the men to an old gaunt beggar woman! Owen also uses metaphors such as, “Drunk with fatigue”, to display how tired the infantrymen are, this metaphor leads us to believe that the men are so tired that they are unaware what is happening around them. They are so tired that even when the flares go off behind them they don't have the energy or even feel like turning around to see them. “Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs. The poet's choice of vocabulary in verse one is very effective in communicating the message of fatigue. He to describes the harsh conditions of the battlefield by using words such as sludge, trudge, and haunting. These men are but mere shadows of the bright vibrant people, which many pre 1900 poets believed, fought in battles.
The pace of the poem quickens in the 2nd stanza displays the soldiers panic during the gas attack! Punctuation is used to create this faster rhythm; exclamation marks and short sentences suddenly speed up the pace and create excitement. This gives the reader an image of the weary soldiers suddenly changing into panic-stricken men! It means that the reader feels that they are involved in what is happening! The direct speech “Gas! Gas! Quick boys!” is used to create panic. But we are told that one man was not quick enough in putting on his “clumsy helmet.”
“Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
The green light Owen talks of is the sight through their gas masks. Owen uses a simile saying that the man is drowning in a green sea. Owen also uses vocabulary such as stumbling, floundering, and fumbling to describe the desperate actions of the dying man. The verbs such as yelling and drowning give the reader a feeling of chaos! The simile, “like a man on fire” is used to describe the agony, which the man is encountering; it suggests how the man is writing and twisting in desperation as the gas burns him.
In the third and final stanza, Owens guilt is suggested in the line, “In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”. The fact that he dreams about this all the time, and that the man is plunging at him in particular means that he feels guilty for this mans death. Owen uses adjectives such as flung, hanging, vile and incurable to give his readers a detailed description of what these horrors are like! “Behind the wagon that we flung him in,” the word flung is used as it gives us the impression that the other soldiers had absolutely no respect for their companion and they treated the roughly. The poet uses onomatopoeia in this verse to communicate the actions of the dying man, describing how during the rough wagon journey, he could hear the blood “Come gargling from his froth corrupted lungs”. Similes such as, “his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin”, portray how the man was desperate and giving up his fight for life. Wilfred finishes this poem by saying,
“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
Own is clearly showing here how in no way is it a “lovely and honourable thing; to die for one’s country.” No one could witness or learn of such an event and yet still look at war from the angle presented by pre 1900 poets.
A second poem of Wilfred Owen’s, which demonstrates his view on war, is “The Send Off”. As in “Dulce et Decorum est”, the title conjurors up an image of a grand and deeply patriotic send off for the soldiers as they make their way to the front to defend their native land. The poem is written in seven short stanzas and the pace is slow and almost contradictory to such a grand title. The first stanza however, soon puts paid to this idea. The poem is set in “darkening lanes” and this immediately suggests that the soldiers are heading to their doom and yet are singing to put on a good face. This is suggested by the oxy-moron “grimly gay” which Own uses to describe the soldiers’ faces. The soldiers were not even important enough to leave from a main station but instead head towards a siding-shed-a small sub station away from anywhere as if they are hidden from the public’s view.
The second stanza describes the flowers, which are draped over the men, as being like those covering the dead and this too seems to suggest the imminent death these men face. The only men watching them go were “Dull porters and “a casual tramp” who was “Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.” The tramp would probably only miss them because he probably had been given food if he had gone up to the camp. The porters were not interested as such an occurrence was probably an everyday happening. Owen’s choice of diction such as “dull” or “casual” emphasises the fact that no one was really moved by the soldier’s parting for war. There was none of the heroic ideas that come across so clearly in pre 1900 war poetry. In the fourth stanza Owen uses personifies the signals and a lamp suggesting that even these inanimate objects know that there is little chance of these men returning alive. The fifth stanza carries on in the same light, showing how and why the men went unacknowledged. “They were not ours” shows why the village let them pass. No one knew where these men had been sent and no one was that bothered either.
The first five stanzas emphasise how secretly and unobserved these men went to war. The final two stanzas shows how no one will ever know if they ever return home alive. The poem ends un a grim note, showing that if their Send Off was grim, any men who return will face an even less triumphant event. The closing lines, “A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to village wells,
Up half-known roads.”
emphasise the fact that few will return, and these few will be different men. Their perception of life will have been completely changed by the war and once familiar paths will look so different.
This poem along with “Dulce et Decorum est” shows how war is not glamorous and how untrue the perception of young, fit, enthusiastic men going off to war is and especially the image of the same men triumphantly returning. The final post 1900 war poem written by Wilfred Owen, which I will look at, is “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Like the previous two poems, this also displays war in an unglamorous light.
'Anthem for Doomed Youth' is a sonnet. Sonnets traditionally were happy and about love or an epic tale. In contrast, Owen uses the rigid structure of a sonnet (an octet and a sestet) to contrast with the theme of death and loss. In the title (an oxy-moron) are the words, 'Doomed Youth' which immediately informs the reader that this sonnet isn't a fairy tale or a happy tale of love but is a distressing poem about the boys who went to war 'doomed' never to return. These words are grouped with the word “Anthem”, which would normally be a song of joy. By calling his poem an anthem, Owen conveys just how serious its subject is. He is referring to both the men who had died and also to the men who were yet to die in the war.
Owen tells the reader that these men who “will die as cattle” will have no great funeral with full military honours but instead their only accompaniment to their final resting place will be the constant intermittent rabble of the war.
“What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.”
There is nothing glorious in describing dead “heroes” as cattle but here Own is trying to put across how far the image of heroic death on the battlefield is from reality. Here it also appears Owen is making a pun on the old word for the Lord’s Prayer “Paternoster.” Here it would first appear that the rifles’ rattle overrides or patters out the noise of heavy artillery in the background. Owen also appears to be saying that the sound of the rifles is the only prayer being said for the dead men.
The poem concentrates on showing what isn’t present. It emphasises again that there are no prayers or bells and the only voice of mourning is the sound of shells going off around the men. The only memorial for their lives will be in mind of a few at home who wait anxiously for word of these men. This poem emphasises again and again the lack of any glory or honour or heroism associated with these men who fought and died for their country. The pace of this poem is slow, a memorial which almost mocks the ideas of those who feel death on the battlefield is a glorious experience. It is typical of Owen’s poetry. Every last detail is recorded of what death is really like in war.
After studying the portrayal of war in poetry it seems clear to me that in the pre 1900’s before mass media coverage was introduced, the general portrayal of war was that of it being honourable, patriotic and much glorified. Writers such as Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Shakespeare never actually were present during any battle and wrote simply in response to popular belief. After 1900, as the media started to give more accurate accounts of the atrocities of war, less non-combatants pedalled such a romanticised view of war. It was poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon who wrote their views on war. These views were realistic as such men actually participated in the war itself. Siegfried Sassoon sums up what he feels war is all about. “War is an undignified sacrifice of soldiers due to political errors and insincerity.” Such views are so different to pre 1900 poets nut in my opinion these grim realistic accounts reveal what everybody should know. No one should be tricked into thinking that “It is a lovely and honourable thing; to die for one’s country.”
