The poem has a constant rhyming pattern all the way through with words like “blundered”, “hundred”, “thundered” and “wondered” or “shell”, “fell” and “well”. Having this rhyming pattern throughout makes the poem seem to flow more easily and gives it a more prominent structure. It emulates the pace of the battle which was over in twenty minutes.
The rhythm of “The Charge of the Light Brigade” mimics the sound of horses’ hooves by using tripling such as “half a league, half a league, half a league onward” the sound of galloping horses is continued when the poet uses words like “volleyed and thundered”.
Tennyson draws attention to the fact that The Battle of Balaclava was one of the biggest military blunders ever made in his poem by writing “Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell” showing that to send the Light Brigade into battle was wrong and that hardly any of them would return.
In verse two the poet informs the reader that the soldiers knew that a mistake had been made but followed the orders anyway. The lines “Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die” show that the soldiers could not refuse to go into battle, even if they knew “someone had blundered”, all they had to do was go into battle and die.
Tennyson shows admiration for the Light Brigade in his poem. He writes “boldly they rode and well” depicting that although the soldiers knew many of them of them would not return, they still went into battle and fought well. Tennyson also displays pity for the soldiers by writing “while horse and hero fell” suggesting that the horses and their riders should never have been sent into battle.
Although Tennyson’s poem shows that the Light Brigade was wrongly sent into battle, he gives a definite impression that the soldiers actually died heroically. Wilfred Owen tells the truth about war in “Dulce et Decorum est” and shows that there is definitely nothing heroic about dying in battle.
“Dulce et Decorum est” has three verses, none of which are the same length. Each verse could possibly represent a different stage in the experience of war and to show that nothing is equal. The first stanza tells the reader of how the soldiers were “coughing like hags” and how they were “drunk with fatigue” showing just how awful the conditions in the war were. The first stanza also tells that although they were exhausted when the call of “Gas! Gas!” came; they were still fast enough to put on their masks before it was too late, apart from one man who was just too “drunk” to help himself.
The second verse consists of just two lines. Wilfred Owen uses the two lines to show that even though it was an everyday occurrence for a man to die, it still attacked his dreams every single night. The two lines are written in present tense, this suggests that Owen wanted to show that the events of war would haunt the soldiers’ everyday until they died.
The final stanza describes how awful it actually was to die from the gas and how Owen and his regiment had “flung” the dying man behind a wagon because they could not wait to give him a proper burial. The final verse finishes with a message, “The old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, that to die for your country is not an honour.
Owen uses a variety of metaphors and similes to convey his point, examples of this are “obscene as cancer”, cancer is a horrible disease which has taken many lives and reflects the violence of war, “coughing like hags”, implying they are old and weary and “like a devil’s sick of sin”, this indicates that they all feel it is wrong to be killing people and are sick of it but there is no way to get out of it. All of these metaphors and similes suggest something bad and again tell the reader how awful war is.
There is a constant rhyming pattern throughout, the first line and the third, the second with the fourth and so on. This gives the impression that nothing is equal in war but it is a repetitive experience.
I think this poem is more powerful than “The Charge of the Light Brigade” because Alfred, Lord Tennyson was not at the Battle of Balaclava but Wilfred Owen saw all the horrors of the First World War and was able to give a correct image of what actually happened in battle.
