‘Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell,
Rode the six hundred’
He’s turning the valley into a huge mouth with teeth that’s only going to swallow
them whole; he’s turning the valley into a deadly monster. This is very effective
because it makes us feel nervous for the soldiers. It sounds like they have no chance
of surviving, entering into the big jaws of death. There is big sense of tension here.
In the next verse we see that the soldiers have gone into the valley and are starting
to fight, bringing out their weapons. Here, we are all wondering what’s going to
happen next, wanting to know if the soldiers will make it. This verse raises the
tension.
‘Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:’
But as we read on, we see that the soldiers are actually breaking through the line of
men, and are fighting violently with all their might.
‘Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.’
Tennyson uses alliteration to echo and emphasise the sound and fury of the battle here. ‘Sabre-stroke, shatter’d, sunder’d’
We see here that the soldiers have done a great deal of damage; the Russians are being killed by the swords. This success is very unexpected, the soldiers have been very lucky. But then we realise, their success came at a very heavy price. We know that not everyone survived,
‘Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred’.
The fact that the poet has been repeating the sentence ‘Rode the six hundred’ in the last three verses is very effective as we can clearly see that something’s changed here, and there is more emphasis on the fact that something terrible has happened, and that the six hundred will not be returning. This is very dramatic.
‘Canon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon behind them.’
These lines are repeated here to show that the soldiers are no longer trapped. They have broken through and are riding back to safety. The first two lines are the same as they were previously, but the last line has changed to show that the Russians are behind them now and they are no longer surrounded. This is a relief for us that they are entering back from the mouth of Hell, the soldiers have miraculously survived the jaws of Death.
The verse is finishing with the line
‘All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred’.
He has repeated the line, ‘Rode the six hundred’ here, except he’s changed it to ‘All that was left of them, left of six hundred’. The way he has changed the repeated line is very effective and dramatic. Sadly, not all the soldiers were as lucky as the ones that survived. 247 were killed out of 600. This gives a very dramatic ending to the verse, before the ending there is a happy atmosphere as we read that the soldiers are arriving back safely. Now the atmosphere is tense and sad as we read that most of the soldiers sadly didn’t survive. He brings us back to reality.
In the last verse, Tennyson is addressing the reader, asking a rhetorical question;
‘When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
He’s asking us when will their glory fade? But what he’s really saying is that their glory
will never fade, and that it is our duty to remember them and the honourable thing
they did, fighting for their country. This is contrasting to the other poet who wrote
‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, he is saying that it isn’t a glorious thing at all to fight for your
country or to go to war. Tennyson is finishing this last verse with ‘Noble six hundred’,
to show to us what he thought of the soldiers. They are no longer just ‘the six
hundred’, because they have accomplished something heroic and fought for their
country, many losing their lives. Therefore they are now the ‘noble six hundred’.
The next poem I will be analysing is ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen. The title is ironic because we see that Wilfred Owen, right from the start, is making it very clear that he doesn’t think it is a glorious and proper thing to fight in the war, as the title suggest. He is being a little sarcastic here.
In the first few lines we receive a very clear image of the war.
‘Bent double, like beggars under sacks,
Knock-Kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge’.
This isn’t a very pleasant image at all, but it gives us an idea as to how Wilfred Owen
saw the war. He uses a lot of adjectives, metaphors and comparisons in this verse,
which is effective as it emphasises how horrible the war was and it makes the
description very powerful, it also makes the poem more interesting for the reader. He is trying to say here that there was so much blood on some
of their feet, that it acted like a shoe to some of the soldiers that had already lost
their boots.
‘All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots’.
Here Wilfred Owen is trying to say that the soldiers were blind, drunk and deaf. Of
course we know that he doesn’t mean this in the literal sense, but it’s very effective
to emphasise bad the circumstances were for the soldiers. He is calling them blind
because there is so much smoke there that they can’t see, it’s burning their eyes. It
could also mean that they’re so tired that their eyes have gone blurry. It’s obvious to
us that the soldiers are not fine and glorious at all.
In the second verse a lot of panic and tension is crated by the line,
‘Gas! GAS!’
The fact that Wilfred Owen has repeated the word gas is very effective to raise
tension it and makes us feel like something terrible is going to happen. He also uses
capital lettering very effectively, as this is very effective to stress the panic even
more. We know that the soldiers are panicking, they are fumbling with their clumsy
helmets, getting them on just in time. Short sentences are used here, to emphasize
the panic fear that the soldiers felt. Just as we think that the worse is over, as we
read on we find out that something terrible has happened. Wilfred Owen wants us to
see that there is no happy ending in a war. Someone did not make it in time, he was
still struggling to put on his helmet. The style that Wilfred Owen uses here to
describe the man is very effective, in my opinion. He is turning the gas into water,
and it’s as if the soldier is drowning in it, the gas filling his lungs, he’s drowning in the
green sea. He had no hope.
‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning’.
Then the poet goes on to say,
‘In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning’.
The three verbs "guttering", "choking" and "drowning" listed one after another
covey the increasing panic of the soldier who has inhaled the poisonous gas. The
harsh sounds and rhyme of these words is very effective. The words create a strong
and increasing impression of the unfortunate soldier’s struggle to breathe as he is
choked by the gas.
The poet is saying here, that he felt so helpless, watching the man die. Not being able
To help. It must be awful to just have to stand there, watching as a fellow soldier is
dying in pain and you can do nothing to stop it. But there was nothing anyone could
have done.
We see in the last verse, even after the soldiers have died, they are still not being paid
any respect at all. Even after dying for their country they are only flung into a back of
a wagon like potato sacks. They’re treated like they aren’t important at all.
Wilfred Owen goes on to give a very unpleasant image of the state that the soldier is
in,
‘The white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of din;
If you could hear at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs’.
The poet gives a very vivid and vile description here, to emphasise how the soldiers
have been treated and that they are in much pain. It is an unpleasant image of an
innocent soldier; the gas has eaten at his insides, rotting away at him. He’s telling us
that this is what happens when you go to war and die for your country. The soldiers
have been tortured; they didn’t deserve this at all. But the sores are incurable, there
is nothing we can do now. The fact that the poet calls the soldiers innocent makes
the situation seem worse, in my opinion. Because, they didn’t deserve this, they are
supposed to be heroes, fighting over their country. They should be rewarded for
what they did, but they aren’t even rewarded with respect or glory.
Wilfred Owen is addressing the reader and making the reader think. He is saying
that If you saw all of this, the panic and the pain that the soldiers were going through
and the disrespect they were given, and experience what it was like to be there, you
wouldn’t be able to say to ‘Children adherent for some desperate glory’ that it’s a
glorious thing to go to war and die for your country.
As we can see, both poems are very different, they contrast with each other, giving
totally different views on the war and focusing on very different sides of the war. For
instance, Tennyson is saying that it is a very glorious and heroic thing to fight and die
for your country, while Wilfred Owen is implying that war is not a glorious thing at all.
There are some very strong descriptions in ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ like, ‘Knock-kneed,
coughing like beggars under sacks’ to emphasise what war was like. Wilfred Owen
was there, experiencing it all, so he knows what it really is like. He’s describing some
unpleasant images of the war, people in pain and dying. Whereas in ‘The Charge of
the Light Brigade’ there is no direct description of death, even though we know that
hundreds die. Tennyson has decided to focus on the bravery of the men instead,
because he is writing what he thinks people want to hear. He’s writing about how
heroic and brave the men were and that what they did should be respected. But
Wilfred Owen is telling the truth about the war and not what people want to hear.
There are very different feelings and atmospheres in the two poems. ‘The Charge of
the Light Brigade’ has a nice rhythm to it and has a more pleasant and graceful
feeling to it. Whereas ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ creates a sense of panic and tension.
