He plunges at me, guttering, choking drowning”
“The charge of the Light Brigade” celebrates the advance of six hundred soldiers during a battle in the Crimean war. They were following a mistaken order and rode into their death.
The rhyme scheme in “Dulce et decorum est is rigid and alternate. This is ironic as Wilfred Owen served in the army and was used to order and regiment. Owen enforces this into his poem and it is like Owen could not escape the rigidity from the army.
“Bent double. Like old beggars under sacks.
Knock kneed coughing like hags we cursed through the sludge
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs.”
The rhyme scheme in “The Charge of the light Brigade” is flexible and irregular, but it has riming couplets and rhyming triplets. There are two questions in the poem.
"Was there a man dismayed?”
"When can there glory fade?”
These two questions rhyme although they are different verses. This links the ideas, the answer to the first question was obviously no and because the soldiers were not upset they were glorious eyes. The irregular rhyme scheme represents the chaos and confusion that came room the mistaken order.
There are three verses in the poem “Dulce et decorum est” and Owen addresses the reader in the last verse. In the first verse the poet uses the pronoun we. In the second verse he focuses on me or I and in the final verse Owen talks directly to the reader using you. When he addresses the reader he is trying to get the point across that dieing for your country ids not sweet and fitting as stated in the old lie
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”
There are six verses in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” representing the six hundred soldiers who were sent into battle. This is also represented in the reposition of the end of every verse.
The language in “Dulce et Decorum est” is effective featuring onomatopoeia
“Come gargling…. “
Metaphors such as
“Dim through the misty pane”
Similes including
“Bent double, like beggars under sacks”
Alliteration
“…Some smothering dreams….”
Owen uses all this to make the lines stand out and to get his points across. He especially makes the part about the man dieing stand out using onomatopoeia and alliteration. And the end of the poem Owen uses lain
“Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori”
This means it is sweet and fitting to die for your country. Owen says this the old lie. When Owen was young, children would have been taught Latin and told
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”
Owen thinks this is wrong and he calla it a lie to make the people at home stop teaching the children that its is good to die in the war.
In “the Charge of the Light Brigade” Tennyson also uses the same linguistic devices as Owen. However Tennyson has included natural imagery to great effect. He describes the valley, which would have once have been peaceful, as
“The valley of death” here Tennyson contrasts the ideas of war and peace. Here the soldier’s peace leaves, resulting in their death. This metaphor is continued in the third verse where the poet gives death a physical form
“Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell”
The main reason why these two poems are different is because Owen fought in the war and got a first hand experience. He witnessed what happened and saw people die. Tennyson however stayed at home and read about battles in newspapers and didn’t get first hand experience. The things wrote in the newspapers were probably propaganda and used to convince the soldiers to enlist and fight. Their families were comforted by the thoughts such as Tennyson’s.
It is ironic that Wilfred Owen probably read Tennyson’s poem and looked up to him and Tennyson’s poem probably convinced Owen to join the army. But Owen has a completely different view to Tennyson as he is also a poet but he is fighting. He is not naturally a soldier and his time probably better spent creating rather than destroying. Owen says it is wrong to send young boys onto war and asks the public to reject the old lie
“Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori”
Whereas Tennyson says it is glorious to die for your country and if you do this your glory will not fade.
I prefer the poem “Dulce et Decorum est” as I share the same views as Wilfred Owen and I think that dieing for your country is nit sweet and fitting or glorious. I also enjoyed some of the language Owen uses in the poem like the onomatopoeia and the metaphors.
