Tennyson uses repetition in the fifth and sixth line of the second stanza.
‘Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why.’
This shows that the men were like machinery with no choice but to survey orders without inquiring about any possible mistakes. This shows that society at the time was strict, as the soldiers had to do what they were told even if they were entering a trap.
In the third stanza, the men arrive at the valley only to see that they are surrounded with canons.
‘Canon to right of them, canon to left of them, canon in front of them.’
Tennyson uses repetition to give the reader an impression of being enclosed with canons. Additionally Tennyson uses onomatopoeia to emphasize the sound of the valley and war to give the reader a feeling of the action.
‘Volley’d and thunder’d’
Even though the men were being fired at they still rode on ‘into the jaws of death’ and into ‘the mouth of hell.’
Tennyson uses these metaphors to show readers in Britain how their men were sent to their deaths and how the Propaganda used to give the image of Britain being victorious was false. He uses them to demonstrate to the reader how treacherous the valley was.
He then ends the third stanza with repetition by ending with the same two lines as the second and first stanza. It is used to make the soldiers sound brave.
‘Into the mouth of hell, Rode the six hundred.’
In the fourth stanza, we discover that the ‘Light Brigade’ only have sabers to attack the Russians, when they have canons and other weapons at the top of the valley bearing down on the British.
‘Flash’d all their sabres bare.’
Tennyson wants to give the image of swords reflecting the light from the canon’s flash. With their sabres they manage to rupture the formation of the Russian army and break the front line. This describes how the British had some sort of success.
‘Right thro’ the line they broke.’
We also learn that after their suicide attack on the Russians, their army was diminished.
‘Then they rode back, but not, not the six hundred.’
Once again this statement has repetition with the endings of the first, second and third stanza.
The fifth stanza is somewhat similar to the third one, but the dissimilarity is that the British army are charging in the 3rd and retreating in the fifth stanza. The majority of the fifth stanza is repetition apart from the end where a quantity of the men narrowly escape ‘the jaws of death.’
The last stanza (sixth), is mainly glorifying the men for their heroism with a rhetorical question.
‘When can their glory fade?’
Tennyson lets the reader know of their unstructured charge and uses imperatives-he tells the reader what to think to allow people all around the world to be astonished by the soldiers’ courageousness. Therefore the reader falls in awe of ‘the Light Brigade.’
‘Dulce et Decorum est,’ is a poem by Wilfred Owen. Owen is desperate that we understand the indignity of the ‘old lie’ and in this poem he is describing his experience in the trenches of the First World War in 1916.
The words of the first stanza in ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ imitate the slow pace of the soldiers. The men are feeling fatigued, after frequently attacking the enemy.
‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks.’
The soldiers are not old, but it is the effect of the simile to give the reader the impression.
The men are returning to the trenches and lots of onomatopoeia and sounds of diction are used such as: ‘Sludge, trudged, limped.’ Their purpose is to slow the poem down to summarize the exhaustion of the men.
It is unlike the first stanza of ‘the Charge of the Light Brigade’ because Owen writes about the soldiers being exhausted from battle and Tennyson writes about the soldiers bravely charging into the valley of death. However they both use metaphors to help the reader imagine what is going on.
In the second stanza, the pace of the poem speeds up to reflect the sense of fright and urgency of the gas attack.
‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’
Owen does this by using repetition which creates an image of a frenzy of people grabbing helmets. Also in the second stanza Owen describes the action as an ‘ecstasy’ which seems an ironic use of diction here. This makes the reader feel empathy for the men as they struggle to save their lives, just as we felt sympathy for the soldiers in Tennyson’s poem as they were forced to enter the ‘jaws of death.’
In society, Tennyson saw them as heroes, whereas Owen attempted to show them as Victims. Nowadays we view them as victims because of the use of televisions for example.
We, like Owen are horrified that one soldier is powerless to get his mask on in time. Owen uses similes to create the image of a green screen of chlorine gas.
‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.’
The image makes the reader imagine what pain and suffering the soldiers went through.
In the third stanza, Owen tries to bring the action to the reader by using the diction ‘guttering, choking and drowning’ which are all active verbs. Owen is still experiencing nightmares and wishes to show the effect of the gas.
‘In all my dreams, before my helpless sight.’
Owen separates these two lines from the rest of the poem which suggests that he feels guilty for the man’s death, as he was an officer and it was his duty to care for his men.
While Owen cannot avoid the vision of his dying soldier, Tennyson finds himself attempting to make the soldiers appear valiant while being shot at by canons.
The fading soldier is thrown into a cart and Owen uses onomatopoeia with the word ‘flung’ which proposes that the abrupt treatment of the dying soldier is a habitual and tragic occurrence.
Owen also slows the poem down in the last stanza with the line;
‘If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood.’
This uses the effect of bombs going off and blood being splattered everywhere, causing the soldiers to become shell-shocked and so they freeze, which is why Owen slows the poem down.
Owen uses senses to present graphically the horror of his fellow soldier’s hanging face. We see his face, which is contorted in agony. To demonstrate this, Owen uses a powerful simile, ‘his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin.’ We hear his death clatter.
He is describing these images because it is what he has nightmares about every night and so he wants the rest of Britain to understand what he is seeing as well.
References to disease are loaded in this stanza- corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer vile incurable sores. Once again he is telling readers of the horrific images he saw day by day. Unlike Owen, Tennyson ends his poem by worshiping ‘the light Brigade,’ whereas Owen ends by informing the reader of young innocent boys who cannot tell the story of the ghastly war and he is instructing society not to listen in to propaganda.
After evaluating the two poems, I preferred ‘Dulce at Decorum est’ because it is a piece of ‘anti-war’ literature, and a first hand account which shows the revulsion of war. I favoured the way Owen commences with a slow rhythm in the first stanza and uses long sounds such as ‘sludge.’ Then in the second stanza, the pace is quickened by the use of the caesura.
Furthermore I like the way Owen uses a narrative structure and stages his verses, because it is as if he is telling a story, but it is realistic and so will shock the reader.
Finally, I prefer ‘Dulce at Decorum est’ essentially because Owen begins with describing the soldiers as ‘old beggars,’ and ends by calling them ‘children’ which gives a powerful message to the reader that Britain sent trained men into the war, but as a result of poor tactics they came out as children, unable to describe their experiences.
