Both poems put a lot of emphasis on pathos. If the reader couldn’t connect with the characters by feeling sorry for them then the poems would have so much less effect. The most common angle that both poets use seem to be the loss of things. Byron’s character looses everything dear to him, which in end makes him lose even the will to live. Byron conjures a lot of pity by showing the things that the prisoner can no longer enjoy. ‘When day was beautiful to me,” implies that it no longer is, that during his encounter in the prison he has lost the things that made day beautiful to him. Arthur has lost many things now as his life comes to an end. ‘Sir Bedivere, the last of his knights’ shows that he has lost all of his knights, who were his protectors, his comrades and his friends. One device, I feel, Byron alone uses, is that his protagonist feels the pain of his two brothers. Arthur dies almost alone, his friends, his knights, are gone, excluding Bedivere. If he has seen the pain of people he loves it is not at this moment or mentioned at this moment. The prisoner, however, has to watch his brothers die and as he does part of him leaves with them, shown well in this line, ‘I saw it silently decline and so, perchance, in sooth did mine.’ His own pains were not as great as those he felt as he had to watch his two dear brothers suffer and him not being able to help them. ‘And fettered feet the worst of ills’ he knew his brother well so he knew what pain such things would bring him. ‘Such a bird in such a nest’ showed how he saw his other brother in this complication, a beautiful bird but in a nest that shared none of that beauty, a nest that imprisoned him. With Arthur the pathos comes from another source. He is injured and knows his end is coming and we see that in lines such as ‘so deeply smitten through the helm, that without help I cannot last till morn’ and ‘my end draws nigh, my wound hath taken cold and I shall die’. The fact that he knows the end is coming and that he has to wait for it in pain and solitude is a miserable circumstance. As the poem continues Arthur gets closer and closer to the end and pain increases. ‘Faint and pale,’ and ‘languid hands,’ show that part of him has already given up; he can’t go on and soon all of him will be like that. Byron brings pity again to his poem by the fact that his character holds out no hope once his brothers have died. Most people have some sort of hope even if it is irrational. After his brother’s death the prisoner describes his dwelling as ‘the dark vault wherein we lay’ and ‘like a living grave’. He feels that he will die in this place, either that no one will ever be able to rescue him or, as we see, that with his brothers dead he no longer wants to live. The last tool Tennyson uses is the people whom inflict Arthur’s death and pain. Where in ‘the prisoner of Chillon’ his jailers are the enemy, for Arthur they were once his people. ‘I perish by the people which I made’.
Both poems contain a sense of solitariness that increases the pathos and despair to each of the poems. The prisoner when losing his two brothers is all alone in the world. Although there are still people in the world who may be on his side he has lost the last two people who mean anything to him and thus feels completely isolated from the world. With this he no longer wanted to live; there was no reason, no person left for him to live. ‘Because I could have smiled to see the death that would have set me free’ and ‘forbade me a selfish death’. In this prison and in the prison of his own life now with the loss of his family the only escape possible seemed to be death. In the other poem death was not something longed for but something forced upon him. Everything of his seems to be being destroyed and he is powerless to stop it, which included his life’s decline. ‘Aidless, alone, smitten thro’ the helm’ shows the deterioration of his health and the fact that he really is, the last one left. Although he is alone and having his health painfully torn from him, he is never as despairing as the prisoner of Chillon. The prisoner can also be quite despairing in the process of events that happened to him. ‘This was woe…but sure and slow’ his own pain in the dungeon and ‘my chains and I grew friends’ his mental health in the dungeon. He had grown attached to his prison and felt that there was no place for him out in the real world. I felt the longed for death in ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ was far more despairing then the forced death of ‘Morte D’Arthur’.
Although such distressing poems both do contain a touch of beauty, they are placed there for different reasons. ‘Morte D’Arthur’ has a magical sense to it; there is the returning of Excalibur to the lake and then Arthur going with the black cloaked queens. ‘Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,’ (the arm of the lady in the lake) and ‘Twinkling with diamond sparks. Myriads of topaz-light, and jacinth-work’ (the hilt of Excalibur). Although not always beautiful there was a mystical impression to those extracts that contrasted harshly with the imminent death Arthur saw for himself. But the little glimpse of beauty had a use and that was left for sir Bedivere at the end. They seemed to tell the reader that even through this grievous loss there was still hope left for the world. The beauty had a completely different use in ‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’. It appears when the prisoner talks of his brother and when he once glances out the window. ‘The blue Rhone in its fullest flow…torrents leap and gush… whiter sails go skimming down… which in my very face did smile… blew the mountain breeze… and there were young flowers growing.’ And ‘The glimmer of the sun… with azure wings.’ It in no way lightens the mood of the poem, in fact it just makes more despair because you see what the prisoner has lost. The only beauty you see is that which has been taken from him and that which he can never have. His grief is made that much worse as we see the greatness of what he could have had.
‘Morte D’Arthur’ uses imagery throughout its course both to show the death of the land Arthur ruled along with himself and in the movements to set the scene for a greats death. ‘A broken chancel with a broken cross’ shows the death of religion and death is again mirrored in the phrase ‘shattered column’. ‘Dark as a funeral scarf’ and ‘Like the withered moon’ show imagery connecting with death. ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ does this too. (Phrases such as ‘Like a living grave’ and ‘the dark vault lies’ shows that he thought he would die in that prison.) ‘There were three tall trees,” is in a passage where he glimpses the world outside the prison and it represents what he and his brothers could have been had they not been taken from the world. ‘The whole earth a wider prison to me’ shows that the prisoner now had nowhere to go, he was trapped living in a world apart from his family. I think that Tennyson uses imagery to set an atmosphere of death but also just to simply put a picture of the scene into the reader’s head like ‘The sea wind sang’. Byron I feel uses imagery to manipulate the reader’s feelings more. He uses it to project the prisoner’s feelings even clearer into the reader’s mind and, unrelentingly, focuses on the despair of his protagonist.
Both poems use their fair share of devices. When moving on and trying to create a faster movement to his verse Tennyson uses verbs. ‘Leaping… plunged… clutch’d… wheel’d…threw.’ Byron uses the same technique when his character watches the world through the window and he uses movement words to show the world outside moving without him. ‘Leap and gush… skimming… blew… flowing… growing’. Again the difference between the two poems is that Tennyson uses his words to show what’s actually happening, Byron cuts far harsher by showing what the prisoner is missing and thus plunging his life further and further into absolute desolation. Another device effectively used is repetition. ‘I only stirr’d… I only drew, I only lived’ and ‘the last, the sole, the dearest link’. It makes you feel that his subject is more important, it dwells heavier on your mind and makes the point far clearer then a simple brushing over would. They both use rhyming and rhythm devices to further their own emphasis, either pathos or despair. ‘Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam,’ from Tennyson, emphasising the weather. The experience of the prison from Byron, ‘This was woe, but sure and slow.’
Throughout the poems both seem to use similar themes although manipulate them to bring out their own desired goals. In the end it is obvious that whereas Tennyson keeps a shimmer of hope in his poem, Byron completely eradicated that and leaves a feeling of utter loss and despair. There is nothing left once Byron has finished with his writing, yet with Tennyson you can see a future coming through, something new growing out of that which is left.