What similarities and differences are there between the way the theme of war is presented in the poems?

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28th June 2001

By: Chanida Asawangkul Y.10/2

What similarities and differences are there between the way the theme of war is presented in the poems?

        In this essay, I will compare the two poems, which are “Disabled” and  “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. I will talk about what the similarities and differences between the poems by looking at the structure of the poem, language, point of view, effects, type, and theme. This paper also examines how the poets write to produce certain effects and create meanings to reader.

        In the first poem “Disabled”, Wilfred Owen writes about the thoughts and feelings of a young horribly disfigured soldier and how the war affected him. Owen also was once in the war. It is completely different from “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Tennyson who was never in a war before. Tennyson writes about a suicidal charge of 600 men, many of whom died during it. The public at home knew that there had been an error in the commander structure and that they died because of a mistake. Each poem had represented a different idea of war. Disabled had been written against the war but in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” had been written as propaganda to Britain.

        In the two poems “Disabled” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, they show different ideas about joining in the war. In “Disabled” the soldier joined the war because he wants to make his girlfriend think that he is a hero “That’s why; and may be, too, to please his Meg”. Here, we have a young man who joined the army for the wrong reasons. He had no idea of the realities, only that he looks good in uniform. “Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts”. In contrast with “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, the soldiers joined the war because they wanted to protect their country. This poem was composed to make the British feel proud of their troops and their empire. This contrasts strongly with the great loss sustained in the battle for no obvious purpose like “Disabled”.

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         The effects to the reader in the two poems are very different. In “Disabled” there is an appearance of “dark” and “gray”, “ghastly”, and “shivered”. These unpleasant words set up the isolation of the wounded soldier. Owen has a good use of sound and colour in this poem to set a grim portrayal of the subject. For example, he has uses the colour of “grey” to represent the meaning of colourless, sadness, sombre and dim. He also uses the colour of “light blue” to create an image of peace and gentleness to show contrast between the past and the ...

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