This reference is continued throughout the poem. I researched and I’ve concluded that maybe Tennyson was an alluding to the “valley of the shadow of death” in the twenty-third Psalm of the Bible. The allusion to the twenty-third Psalm serves to instill in the reader the sense of fearlessness that the brigade has because the psalm speaks of how evil in not to be feared, not even in the shadow of death itself. The reference to the valley also paints in the reader’s mind an image of being enclosed by greater things on all sides, a feeling no doubt shared by the soldiers. I got this idea from the following stanza;
‘Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them
Cannon in front of them
Storm’d at with shot and shell
Boldly the rode and well,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.’
Tennyson creates a feeling of exhilaration, of the nobility of warfare with his use of poetic devices, such as rhetorical repetition with the ‘cannons’.
These ‘cannons’ are another repeated phrase in the poem that is found in the third and fifth stanzas of the poem. The repetition of the phrase serves to add to the claustrophobic feeling in the reader that began with the mention of the charge into the valley. It also reminds the reader that the cannon of the enemy are all that can be seen no matter where the valiant soldiers look. Death also becomes personified in the third stanza when Tennyson gives it jaws. The brigade is now pitted against the ultimate beast that threatens devour them. They must now kill or be killed. The “jaws of death” and “mouth of hell” are also repeated images in the poem. 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. They paint a picture of soldiers starring into a black abyss that is about to consume them
In his poem Tennyson also provides the reader with some insight into the psyche of the men of the brigade. The first glimpse of the soldiers’ state of mind given in the poem comes in the form of the valley of death. The reader is told that the soldiers face certain death, but the phrase, through its biblical allusion, demonstrates to the reader that the evil is face without fear. Tennyson also gives a more direct insight into the psyche of the brigade when he writes that the soldiers knew;
‘Some one had blunder’d
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die’
Tennyson celebrates the ideal of unquestioning obedience of the soldiers in the face of death, the reader then knows that these men are blindly motivated by loyalty and a sense of duty.
In the fourth stanza, 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´
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! …
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.
This poem uses lots of descriptions that allow the reader to see the battle as the soldier saw it. No matter where you looked, all that could be seen was certain death. No safety could be found. After being taken into the psyche of the brigade and seeing a vivid picture of the valiant charge the reader cannot hope to do anything but admire the valour of the soldiers and “Honour the Light Brigade.”
However, Wilfred Owen wrote ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ towards the end of the First World War. He was killed in action a week before the war ended in 1918. He wanted to end the glorification of war. Owen was against the propaganda and lies that were being told at the time. He had first-hand experience of war and wanted to tell people back at home the truth. Owen was an officer and often had to send men to their deaths and ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ gives a personal account of what the war was like. Many patriotic poems had been written at the time. Owen knew that they lied.
‘Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patri Moria’ translated in to English means It Is Sweet and Honorable to Die for Ones Country. If someone is reading the poem for the first time and learns of the English meaning of the title before reading the poem they may feel it is a poem that represents the army in a good way. How this assumption is further from the truth.
Wilfred Owen in his poem is asking us to question all the certainties that Tennyson is celebrating. The theme of ‘Dulce´ is that war and dying for one’s country are not at all glorious. This message is echoed throughout the poem from the first stanza to the last line. In the opening stanza you get a very different image of the soldiers from what you might expect from the title. One thinks of soldiers as smart, proud, marching, and fighting, but Owen´s picture is based on his personal experience of the battlefield. There is nothing romantic about Owen´s soldiers. They are
‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge´
Right off in the first line, Owen not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end.
Owen presents the reader with details of what people looked like and how they felt.
‘Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
but limped on, blood-shod.´
the men are not really marching, or if they are it is a death march. These men are so tired that they are like old women and beggars floundering through the mud. They are the opposite of Tennyson´s ‘Noble six hundred´. Owen´s picture is not glorious at all and the very first line would shock people at home who imagined the men gallantly charging forward to attack. Owen catches the mood of the scene very well. The first stanza is very slow and inactive and such words like ‘trudge´ capture the atmosphere. He says ‘we´ when he’s talking about the men’s actions so we are reminded that he was there. Owen says
‘Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs’
The soldiers are fed up. They are so tired that even when the flares go off behind them they don't have the energy or even feel like turning around to see them. Owen describes the soldiers of being
"Drunk with fatigue"
Owen is saying that the soldiers are so tired that it is as though they are drunk. Owen is trying too saying that the soldiers are as though they don't know entirely what they are doing. They are just being led along like zombies.
The second stanza is very active and frantic in comparison. This shows the agonizing tedium the men had to put up with and then suddenly they could be killed instantly after a rush of adrenaline or chlorine gas;
‘GAS! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time´
the contrast of ‘ecstasy´ and ‘fumbling´ is an effective way of showing this. At first, the reader is relieved that the gas masks are on, but then we realize that someone hasn’t got his on yet. A man is helplessly stumbling and Owen cannot save him. This is not a glorious death. By using vivid imagery Owen gives the reader the feelings of horror and disgust that he wants them to feel at the sight of the sight of the soldier poisoned by gas:
‘In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.´
This not only shows how the soldier is suffering, but that he is in terrible pain. The reader can imagine the soldier’s life flickering away in a ‘sea’ of green gas, Owen uses a simile saying that the man is drowning in a green sea, the reality of this is that the man is drowning in a sea of his own toxic blood.. It also gives us an insight of his guilt for not being able to help the soldier and this has an effect on soldiers as it disturbs their mind and gives them nightmares. This is not the point that Tennyson stressed.
In Owen´s poem death is vividly presented as the opposite of glorious ‘noble’ death in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’:
‘…the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin´
It is as if he is filling the poem with as many ugly images as he can:
‘.the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues´.
During the man’s death it is as if you are reliving his torture.
The dead bodies are treated like meat there are so many deaths it becomes like a routine thing. He see's the horror that is standing behind the man who has been gassed to death.
‘Behind the wagon that we flung him in’
This stresses the point that Wilfred Owen felt so strongly about, that war dehumanizes people and makes them a statistic not a human. This is not a very dignified death.
In the last stanza, Wilfred Owen leaves us with his own opinion of war;
‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zest,
To children ardent from some desperate glory
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.’
Wilfred Owen knew that war was being glamorized and he wanted to warn people not to go to war. Owen leaves the reader feeling disgusted at what war is capable of. This poem is extremely effective as an anti-war poem, making war seem absolutely horrid and revolting, just as the author wanted it to. Owens main question to the reader in the last stanza is before going into the army think carefully of what you are doing as you might get and see something in great contrast to what you may have imagined. This poem is the closest we will get to experience war and if we had, Owen tells us in the final lines, and then we would not try to glorify the war any more. In the Preface to his poems, published after his death, Owen wrote, ‘All a poet can do today is warning. That is why true poets must be truthful´. This is why Owen criticizes ‘the high zest´ that some people have for ‘the old Lie´ of the glory of war.
In conclusion, Tennyson has a much glamorized attitude to war, a very unrealistic view in my opinion but as the centuries change and people change, opinions change and Owen is not afraid to tell the horror of war and the effect it has on innocent human beings and that war is pointless. Maybe today’s society could learn from Wilfred Owen.
