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 also celebrates the ideal of unquestioning obedience of the soldiers in the face of death:
‘Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs 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! ‘
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.
Kipling, however, is asking us to ‘recall the twilight’ and the ‘dust’ upon the nurses hair. He is not glorifying the soldiers, as Tennyson does, but he is glorifying the nurses and their bravery throughout the constant threat of disease and death that the nurses had to endure. He constantly reminds us to ‘recall’, but actually nobody does remember the nurses.
The two writers, Kipling and Tennyson try to make their poems as realistic as possible and as convincing as possible. Tennyson tries to do this by showing elements of discipline as I said earlier. This discipline and obedience brings the poem to a sensible, down-to -earth level, making it more feasible and convincing. However, at the same instance, it implies that the soldiers are very heroic, as they are prepared to die even though they don’t know what for and yet the ‘sisters’ are brought to life in the more normal way, ‘clink of iron tea cups’
A heroic scene is also created in ‘Charge of the light brigade’ when the general says: ‘forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’. This conjures images of heroes on horseback, charging fearlessly towards the guns, when they know they may be killed. These elements of fearlessness and danger add thrill and romance to the poem. It would appeal to a young person, and perhaps encourage them to join the army. In comparison, ‘Dirge of the dead sisters’ has none of this. Kipling glorifies them, ‘glory in their eyes’, but very little in relationship to Tennyson’s poem. It doesn’t have the dramatisim, excitement and the thrill.
But they do share a similarity as they express robustly in their poetry and they both disregard and condemn war, and try to justify their attitudes in whatever way possible. They both describe war, and scenes from war, with varying levels of intensity and reality and also from different viewpoints.
Tennyson does not show the pain of the people killed, the blood and the anguish and agony both the enemy and the Light Brigade died in. He describes a very clean, efficient annihilation of the enemy and foe whereas in ‘Dirge of the dead sisters’ Kipling does the opposite ‘
The rhetorical question is used twice in ‘light brigade’. It makes the reader think, and therefore imposes the writer’s opinion on his audience. ‘Was there a man dismayed?’ is the first use of the rhetorical question. It implies that the soldiers were not scared of the guns, once again, giving them a bold, valiant image. The second rhetorical question is ‘When can their glory fade?’ This indicates that they will always be heroes, and that their charge was brave and noble. This is one point where the two poems share yet another comparison. They both have rhetorical questions to convey the bravery and heroism of the nurses and the soldiers and makes you recognize them for not who they are and what gender they are but more for what they did for us and other people. ‘Who recalls the noontide?’ (Dirge of the dead sisters).
Tennyson’s poem ends: ‘Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred’. Tennyson feels that the charge of the Light Brigade was noble and brave, not stupid. We can clearly see his quixotic, glorious view of war epitomized here. In ‘Dirge of the dead sisters’ Kipling leaves it with ‘little wasted bodies, ah, so light to lower down’. This is ironic because seeming as it’s a tribute poem, one would’ve thought it would have a glorious ending but instead, implies that the nurses bodies are dead, useless, wasted , and of no more use.
