Compare the presentation of the soldier in Disabled by Wilfried Owen and the Charge of The Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Authors Avatar

Compare the presentation of the soldier in “Disabled” by Wilfried Owen and the “Charge of The Light Brigade” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

        In this essay, I will compare the two poems, are “Disabled” and  “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. I will talk consider the similarities and differences between the poems by looking at the structure of the poem, language, point of view, effects, type, and theme. This paper also examines how the poets write to produce certain effects and create meaning to reader.

In the first poem “Disabled”, Wilfred Owen writes about the thoughts and feelings of a young horribly disfigured soldier and how the war affected him. Owen also was once in the war. It is completely different from “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Tennyson who was never in a war before. Tennyson writes about a suicidal charge of 600 men, many of whom died during it. The public at home knew that there had been an error on the part of the commander officer because of a mistake.

In the two poems “Disabled” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, they show different ideas about joining in the war. In “Disabled” the soldier joined the war because he wants to make his girlfriend think that he is a hero “That’s why; and may be, too, to please his Meg”. Here, we have a young man who joined the army for the wrong reasons. He had no idea of the realities, only that he looks good in uniform. “Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts”. In contrast with “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, the soldiers joined the war because they wanted to protect their country. This contrasts strongly with the great loss sustained in the battle for no obvious purpose like “Disabled”.

 The effects on the reader in the two poems are very different. In “Disabled” there is an appearance of “dark” and “gray”, “ghastly”, and “shivered”. These unpleasant words set up the isolation of the wounded soldier. Owen has a good use of sound and colour in this poem to set a grim portrayal of the subject. For example, he has uses the colour of “grey” to represent the meaning being colourless, sadness, sombre and dim. He also uses the colour of “light blue” to create an image of peace and gentleness to show contrast between the past and the present. Then he uses the colour of “purple” to show his wounds and emphasize the fact that he bleeds until his “veins ran dry”. The example of using sound is when Owen describes voices of boys “rang like a hymn”. The word “hymn” makes us feel very sad and upset because “hymn” is the sound in the church and normally the sounds in church are gloomy. Owen also describes the life of the man that used to be happy before by using words like, “light”, “warm”, and “lovelier”. The lines “in the old times, before he threw away his knees” show the needless sacrifice of joining the war, he has lost the person and the life he had. This creates the idea of change from being active to be passive, being useful to be useless, and being attractive and popular with girls to being ignored. All results of becoming physically disabled. So in this poem the use of language affects reader by evoking sympathy from the reader for the soldier, knowing that he can no longer be happy after his loss due to the horrors of war.

Join now!

In “The Charge of the Light Brigade’, superior feelings of patriotism are exhibited through words like “glory”, “boldly”, “noble” and “hero”. There is the idea of soldiers’ fighting bravely through the battle despite heavy casualties. The effect to the reader is totally different from “Disabled”. This is because the poet wants to have the reader think that being a soldier is honourable and brave and being proud of the soldier. It also states that we will never forget what the soldiers have done “When can their glory fade”.

The narration of both poems is in the third person. This is ...

This is a preview of the whole essay