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Conflict: war and the battlefield
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Four pre-1929 poems show war very differently: glorious, divine, deadly and pointless.
The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tennyson, 1854)
Written about a disastrous cavalry charge at Balaclava in the Crimean War.
"Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward": the dactylic rhythm sounds like galloping hooves.
"Someone had blunder'd", yet the soldiers obey: "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die". It ends: "Honour the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred!"
"Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward": the dactylic rhythm sounds like galloping hooves.
"Someone had blunder'd", yet the soldiers obey: "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die". It ends: "Honour the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred!"
The Destruction of Sennacherib (Byron, 1815)
Based on a Bible story. "The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold".
The army is destroyed by the Angel of Death, and its power "melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!"
A fast anapaestic rhythm drives the poem.
The army is destroyed by the Angel of Death, and its power "melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!"
A fast anapaestic rhythm drives the poem.
Exposure (Owen) and The Man He Killed (Hardy)
Exposure (Owen): soldiers in the trenches suffer more from the cold than from the enemy. "Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us". The refrain "But nothing happens" shows waiting and futility. Owen uses pararhyme (half-rhyme).
The Man He Killed (Hardy): a soldier says that if he had met the man he killed in an inn, they would have shared a drink. "Yes; quaint and curious war is!"
The Man He Killed (Hardy): a soldier says that if he had met the man he killed in an inn, they would have shared a drink. "Yes; quaint and curious war is!"
Compare how Tennyson and Owen present soldiers.
- Tennyson praises their obedience and courage: "Noble six hundred!"
- Owen shows soldiers suffering and waiting pointlessly: "But nothing happens".
- Tennyson celebrates heroism; Owen exposes suffering and futility.
Answer: Tennyson glorifies the soldiers' heroic sacrifice, while Owen shows their pointless suffering in the cold.
Light Brigade: heroic obedience, galloping rhythm, Crimean War. Sennacherib: divine destruction of an army. Exposure: cold, waiting, futility, pararhyme. The Man He Killed: the senselessness of killing a man like yourself.
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