The rhythm of Alfred Tennyson’s poem is very regular, as when it is read aloud, it reflects the horses’ hooves, riding down the narrow valley, towards the battle. ‘Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns he said.’ As this phrase is said out loud, the reader can almost hear the hooves clattering on the stones of the valley. This is used effectively because it almost brings the poem to life. It helps the audience to create a visual picture in their mind of the battle, and therefore, helps them to understand and appreciate how courageous the soldiers were. The rhythm of the poem is very regular. The sound of the horse’s hooves help it sound regulated and it catches the reader’s attention because of this.
The structure of the poem is also very regular, as it has six stanzas, each one dealing with a specific stage of the battle. The first verse describes how the men are entering the battle, all riding down the valley in unity. The third outlines how they are in mid battle with their ‘sabres flashing bare.’ The poem is very controlled and very well structured, and the rhyming pattern adds to this regulated form. The rhyming is alternating to help create the image of the soldiers riding steadily and bravely towards their death. ‘Stormed at with shot and shell’ and ‘while horse and hero fell.’ The fact that each stanza deals with a different stage of the battle shows that control has been used. This helps the reader to understand each part of the battle and how it took place. Tennyson explains each stage of the battle in not very much detail, but just enough so that the reader understands what is happening. ‘Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volley’d and thunder’d.’ The poet uses direct speech in his poem to bring it to life and to make the reader feel more involved. He tells the reader to ‘Honour the Charge they made.’ This makes his audience feel important because the line is addressed directly to them. Tennyson is very persuasive by trying to convince his readers to have the same opinion as him by telling them to honour the charge. This implies that he doesn’t want the soldiers to be forgotten. He also uses tripling to draw the attention of the reader to the fact that the men were to do as they were told; otherwise they would not be doing their duty. ‘Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.’
Alfred Tennyson uses alliteration to convey the terrible conditions the soldiers had to suffer. ‘Stormed at with shot and shell.’ This makes the reader feel sympathy for the soldiers. The next line states that they ‘rode boldly.’ This gives the impression that they were determined to do their duty even if it meant death. He also uses metaphors to show how unlikely it would be for the Light Brigade to defeat the Russians. ‘All in the alley of death.’ Tennyson uses this phrase four times throughout his poem to emphasise the unlikelihood of this. He also uses a capital ‘d’ for the word ‘death’ to reinforce that he thought that the men were going to die.
Tennyson’s poem is not very detailed as to what happened in the battle, however, Wilfred Owen’s poem, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est,’ was written from his own experiences of War, and therefore more graphic. We learn from his experiences first hand.
The poem starts off describing how tired, limp soldiers are making their way towards a distant place of rest. ‘Knock-kneed, coughing like hags we cursed through sludge.’ Owen describes how men ‘marched asleep because they were so tired of the fighting. Then a bomb drops behind them and the men fumble for their gas masks, but one man didn’t get there in time. Own tells how he ‘saw him drowning under a green sea.’ He then explains how men ‘flung’ the dying man into the wagon, and his face was hanging with pain, ‘like a devil’s sick of sin.’ He then tries to discourage any young person from believing the ‘Old Lie,’ that it is ‘sweet’ or ‘appropriate’ to die for one’s country.
In this poem, Owen depicts the many horrors that War creates. Men were ‘bent double’ with pain and tiredness; ‘Like old beggars under sacks.’ These men were fighting for their country and had to carry all their possessions on their backs. They could barely carry their own weight, let alone bags full of their things. Owen wanted to show how much pain the soldiers had to endure. He uses three present participles: ‘Guttering, Choking, Drowning.’ This makes the reader witness the horrific pain of the soldiers. It paints a vivid image of what some of the soldiers had to go through. It conveys that the man was desperately struggling to stay alive and that there was nothing that anybody could do to help. The gas didn’t just affect the dying man it affected everyone around him. They all felt helpless, but thankful it wasn’t them. Also, Owen was trying to show how false the image of War is. There was nothing glorified about ‘guttering, choking and drowning.’ Owen didn’t want other young men to think that it was ‘appropriate’ to die for their country; he wanted them to see the truth about the reality of War.
Wilfred Owen uses very emotive language to create images of War. He uses hard phrases like ‘We cursed through sludge.’ This gives the impression that the men were so tired they couldn’t bare to march any longer. The word ‘sludge’ is a very horrible word and just as there is nothing glorified about War, there is nothing glorified about sludge, and if any young men wanted to be soldiers, this was the type of things they had to do. Owen then uses the phrase ‘Drunk with fatigue.’ This suggests that the way the men were walking was like drunken old men, when really they were stumbling with tiredness. Owen also tells of how blood came ‘gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs’ of his friend. He uses very harsh words like ‘froth-corrupted’ to create a very vivid picture. It suggests that his friend died a long, very painful death. He also uses the phrase ‘like a devil’s sick of sin.’ This gives the illusion of grotesque pain and misery, that even the devil would feel sorry for the man’s agony. The title of the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est,’ is a Latin phrase. The language of Latin is now dead, and could have been used to convey how many deaths there were during the War.
Owen uses quite a few similes to describe the way the men had to trudge through mud, and how tired they were. He says the soldiers were ‘coughing like hags.’ The word ‘hag’ suggests that their faces were so drawn and dirty that nobody could tell whether they were male or female. He then uses a metaphor to describe the flares in the sky: ‘Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs.’ The word ‘haunting’ suggests that however hard the men try to turn their backs and escape, the memories of War will haunt them forever. It is also a very chilling word used to discourage young men from joining the army. ‘Knock- kneed, coughing like hags.’ This phrase uses alliteration to illustrate how tired the men were. Owen also uses direct speech. ‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace.’ It makes the reader feel more involved in the poem, as the question is addressed directly to them. He is asking them how they would feel if they were in his situation. It is as if he is telling them to be thankful that they are not in his situation, thankful that the false image of War didn’t suck them in. The phrase also stresses that Owen is haunted by the man’s death or that he has nightmares about it.
The language used in Alfred Tennyson’s poem is quite different to that used in Wilfred Owen’s poem. Tennyson uses rhyming effects to convey the terrible message of War. ‘They that had fought so well’ and ‘Back from the mouth of Hell,’ while Owen uses emotive language that catches the reader’s attention. ‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace.’ This phrase instantly makes the reader feel sorry for Owen and what he has just witnessed.
However, there are some similarities between the two poems. Although it is very subtle and discreet, Owen does use some alternate rhyming. ‘An ecstasy of fumbling’ and ‘But someone was still yelling out and stumbling.’ This rhyming technique is not as obvious as Tennyson’s because he doesn’t use it very often. They also both use metaphors to describe the conditions the soldiers had to work under. ‘Plunged in the battery-smoke.’ Tennyson uses this metaphor to describe how the men ‘plunged’ at the Russians through the smoke and fog of the cannons. Owen uses the metaphor ‘Under a green sea, I saw him drowning.’ Again, this indicates how terrible the conditions of War were and the terrible ways that the soldiers lost their lives.
My favourite poem out of the two was ‘Dulce et Decorum Est,’ it clearly depicts what happened during World War I and Owen then says what he feels. At the start of the poem, I was shocked by how bad the conditions of War actually were. The vivid descriptions show how strongly Owen felt about discouraging other young men not to fall for the same propaganda that he did. It made me realise how lucky I am not to be living in those terrible conditions that he had to endure. I think that the poem does fulfil its purpose of discouraging men from joining the army because it is so graphic and vivid. It explains the true atrocities that War brings and how terribly they can affect lives, even after the War has ended. Owen clearly doesn’t want the young men to experience what he has.
