In the last stanza, the picture of despair is made complete by the soldiers total passivity, his future will be to ‘ do what thing the rules consider wise. ‘ He is expected to ‘ spend a few sick years,’ ‘ take whatever pity ‘ others chose to offer him and then tragically sit in a room ‘ waiting for dark. ‘ Owen conveys to the reader the sadness of a once healthy athlete, reduced to a state of helplessness and dependency on others.
Although there is a shade of anger in Owen 's tone, as the young soldier he remains reserved, bitter and faintly resigned to his dreary future. Disabled is similar to Dulce et decorum est and S.I.W, in than its purpose is partly to reveal to the reader the suffering of war. However, within Disabled, this suffering is intensified by Owen 's focus on an individual.
More than wanting the reader to feel sorry for the Disabled soldier and others like him, Owen wanted to expose those at home for what they really were- unsupportive. Despite society’s eagerness to send him to war as he was drafted with ‘drums and cheers’, the same society appeared reluctant to embrace him with the same eagerness upon his return ‘ Some cheered him on but not as crowds cheer goal.’ The ‘giddy jilts’ which he had so longed to please by joining up considered him a ‘queer disease’ after his injuries, this showing that he suffers not only from the physical loss of his arm, but also the psychological scar of rejection.
In essence, the young man’s life had been ruined by the war and Owen points the finger towards society, accusing them of forcing him to go. Perhaps they could have made his life a little more whole by offering companionship, however instead they inflicted another damaging blow by isolating him even further upon his return. In his purpose Owen communicates to the reader how lives can be dramatically ruined by war, and society is to blame for their actions both before and after.
The structure of the poem compliments this purpose, as it is loose with irregularities in stanza. This unorthodox approach helps Owen to convince the reader of the soldiers story, and make the reflections more real. Owen 's use of contrast continues throughout the poem, and each stanza contains images in direct opposition to one another. Within the first stanza there is a contrast between the solidity of the soldiers situation, and the movement of the town at night.
Beauty and disease contrast in stanza two, youth and old age in the next but the most impressionable is the contrast Owen creates in stanza four. As the reader is already aware that the soldier has lost an arm and his legs, it is a surprise to hear that prior to the war the boy was proud to have an injury and was carried shoulder high for it:
One time he liked a blood smear down his leg
After the matches carried shoulder high.
This sharply contrasts with his current predicament, as instead of a ‘blood smear’ he sustains a life threatening wound.
is another technique used to promote Owen 's purpose, a good example of this is in the second stanza wherein the boy refers to the old times ‘before he threw away his knees’. As well as providing a very powerful image, the line is laced with irony. Only a very negligent individual would throw his knees away, however the boy did not commit this folly, rather it was committed for him. Imagery does a large part in the poem, the images accompanying his lack of female companionship particularly effective. Owen seems to hone in on the point that the boy is incomplete, and will never really be a man.
The ‘ leap of purple which spurted from his thigh,’ although indicating an arterial wound, also can be seen as a symbolic for ejaculation. Very cleverly Owen again puts important contrast into this small phrase. In the sense of ejaculation, this image promotes life and the creation of it, in a different sense, it can also imply a loss of blood, or loss of life. Owen makes extensive use of , the last two lines of the poem demonstrating this:
How cold and late it is? Why don’t they come
And put him to bed? Why don’t they come?
This repetition equates to monumental depression, the anxiety the boy is feeling as he waits for somebody to put him to bed. The pitiful image of the young man, dreaming of his warm past in a cold lonely room is a haunting one, and Owen uses it effectively. In Disabled, Owen looks at the cosmic experience of war, and convey s to the reader the horror of the individual battle which continues long after the primary conflict
The Charge Of The Light Brigade:
Tennyson´s poem celebrates the glory of war, despite the fact that, because of an error of judgement (‘Someone had blundered´), six hundred soldiers were sent to their death.
He was a civilian poet, as opposed to a soldier poet like Owen. His poem ‘Light Brigade´ increased the morale of the British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War and of the people at home, but Tennyson had not been an eyewitness to the battle he describes.
Tennyson´s poem is a celebration of the bravery of the six hundred British troops who went into battle against all odds, even though they knew that they would be killed. The poem starts in the middle of the action. ‘Light Brigade´ is written in dactylic feet (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables) and this gives a sense of the excitement of the galloping horses in the cavalry charge:
‘Half a league, half a league
Half a league onward´
Tennyson creates a vivid impression of the bravery of the soldiers with many ‘verbs of action:
‘Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there´
The heroic command in stanza 1, which is repeated for effect in stanza 2, sweeps the reader along without time to question the futility of the gesture:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
‘Charge for the guns!´
He uses noble sounding euphemisms like ‘the valley of Death´, ‘the jaws of Death´, ‘the mouth of Hell to describe the fate that awaits these men. He does not convey the gory reality of the slaughter.
Tennyson creates a feeling of exhilaration, of the nobility of warfare with his use of poetic devices, such as rhetorical repetition:
‘Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them´,
and alliteration:
‘Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell´
Tennyson celebrates the ideal of unquestioning obedience of the soldiers in the face of death:
‘Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die´
In the final stanza Tennyson creates a sense of the immortality of the soldiers´ bravery with a rhetorical question and commands:
‘When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!´
The repetition of ‘the six hundred´ at the end of each stanza reminds the reader of the enormous loss of life, but at the end of the poem they have become the ‘Noble six hundred´ and are celebrated as heroes.
Basic Explanation: Charge of the light brigade
Lines 1-4
The beginning lines of the poem throw the reader into the center of action, with a rousing chant that drives the reader, both in its description and in its galloping rhythm, toward the battle. A "league" is approximately three miles long: charging horses could cover half a league in a few minutes. The audiences of the time of the poem would have been familiar with the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, upon which the poem is based, and would have known from the beginning that they were charging to their own doom. (As the poem soon makes clear, the six hundred cavalrymen of the Light Brigade were aware of this themselves.) The poem suggests that it is these moments before the battle has begun that are the Brigade's greatest glory. The phrase "Valley of Death" refers to an episode of John Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress and to Psalm 23 from the New Testament of the Bible: in both of these sources, faith makes people brave when they are faced with death.
Lines 5-8
In the earliest published version of this poem, printed in the London Examiner on December 9, 1853, the command to charge forward was attributed to Lord Nolan, a well-known military figure of the time. In changing the speaker to an anonymous "he," the poet shifts the focus of the poem away from individual actions and decisions onto matters of record, and onto the roles played by followers and leaders in military situations everywhere. In addition to obscuring the identity of the speaker, this final version of the poem changes the command given from "Take the guns" to "Charge for the guns!" This heightens the sense of the danger of the charge, while leaving unstated the reason for charging into the blaring gunfire.
Lines 9-12
No sooner does line 9 repeat the shouted command that sends the Light Brigade to their doom than line 10 makes the reader wonder whether any of the soldiers were stricken with fear upon hearing the command. Although we currently closely associate the word "dismay" with "shock," its actual meaning includes a loss of courage. By raising this issue as a question and then answering that no, there was no fear, Tennyson gives the reader a moment's pause to let the full extent of the soldiers' bravery sink in. Line 11 and line 12 tell the reader without question that every member of the Brigade knew that this order was a mistake. This contradiction — the fact that the soldiers knew they were likely to die because of a "blunder" in military strategy, yet charged forward without fear anyway — gives the poem a psychological depth that would be lost if it merely celebrated the loyalty of soldiers who were unaware of the faulty command they were following.
Lines 13-17
Lines 13 through 15 repeat each other, in the way they phrase the rules these soldiers live by. The style suggests the regimented, militaristic way the members of the Light Brigade think as they ride ahead, and the effect of the strong use of repetition is to drown out concerns about the blunder mentioned in the previous stanza. "Theirs but to do and die" says that the soldiers are actually supposed to die — this might seem contrary to the purpose of fighting, but Tennyson makes it clear that this is the belief of the charging soldiers, for whom such a fate would be the ultimate expression of loyalty. In lines 16 and 17, the perspective shifts from what the soldiers think of their mission to a view of the overall battle situation, again repeating the image of the "valley of Death."
Lines 18-21
The first three lines of this stanza are virtually identical, changing only the location of the cannons, presenting the layout of the battlefield visually, instead of simply stating the fact that there were cannons all around. By repeating the phrase three times, the reader is not only given information about the tremendous odds against the Light Brigade, but the poem gives the feeling of being surrounded.
Lines 22-26
"Stormed" in line 22 extends the image of "thundered" from the line before it, making the barrage of cannon fire aimed at the cavalrymen appear almost like a force of nature. Line 23 makes a point of mentioning that the soldiers of the Light Brigade were brave, but also that they rode their horses well. Their skill is mentioned almost as an afterthought, though, and this is the only place in the poem that it is brought up. The reason for this is that this poem makes its reader analyze the battle almost entirely in terms of attitude, not ability. In lines 24-26, Tennyson expands the phrase that was used to end the first two stanzas: instead of the geographic "Valley of Death," he uses the metaphor "jaws of Death," and extends this metaphor with "mouth of hell." Treating death as the same thing as hell, and making both as real as an animal's attack, the poem heightens the viciousness of death on the battlefield.
Lines 27-38
This stanza celebrates the Light Brigade's control over the battle at its beginning. They ride into the enemy, using their sabres against opponents armed with cannons and pistols, and are able to break through the front line of defense. The pistols and rifles of the day would have been useless to the members of the Light Brigade because they required reloading with a very complicated procedure that involved measuring gunpowder and pellets, which would have been impossible for a man on horseback. Sending a cavalry unit into the confined space of a valley against guns was so obviously hopeless, that it may be this, and not the brigade's initial success, that is referred to when the line "all the world wondered" appears in the middle of a vivid battle scene. In this stanza, the Light Brigade takes such complete control of the situation that their opponents, the Cossacks and Russians, find their defensive line torn apart ("shattered and sundered") and have to retreat, while the six hundred cavalry members, who have by this time stared into the barrels of cannons and guns, continue to press forward bravely.
Lines 39-49
The first five lines of this stanza override any optimism the reader may have gotten from the Light Brigade's initial success. By using the same words as were used in stanza 3 (except that now the cannon are behind instead of in front of them), the poem takes the reader back to the same sense of hopelessness that was established before the battle began. The brief victory that was gained in the fourth stanza has made no difference in the overall scope of the battle. The first time these words were used (lines 18-22), though, they ended with a claim of the soldiers' boldness and skill: this time, they end with the soldiers (referred to directly as "heroes" ) being shot down. The path that the Light Brigade charged into — the jaws of death, the mouth of hell — is mentioned again as the survivors make their escape. Anthropologists and sociologists have observed that going into hell and then returning is a common motif in the mythology of many of the world's cultures, including one of the best-known myths of Western civilization, the labors of Hercules. The survivors of this battle are thus raised to heroic status by the words that this poem uses to describe the valley's entrance.
Lines 50-55
The focus of the poem shifts in this stanza, from describing the battle scene to addressing the reader directly. In using the description "wild" to marvel at the charge, Line 51 implies that thoughtless bravery is to be admired in and of itself, regardless of concerns about strategy or success. Repeating the line "All the world wondered" in line 52 adds to the idea that what the soldiers have done goes beyond the average person's comprehension: the soldiers are following rules that those who rely on intellect over loyalty might not understand. Although a close reading of the tone of this poem can leave little question about how we are meant to feel about these cavalrymen, the poem does not rely upon a reader's understanding of the subtleties of tone, but directly tells the reader in line 53 and line 55 to honor these soldiers. That the poem is so straightforward about its intent is an indicator that it was written for a common, often uneducated, audience, to celebrate the actions of common soldiers who understood what they were being asked to do better than the blundering military strategists who planned the attack.
