CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

• CONTEXT:

  • people criticised Britain for entering the Crimean war , though the government blamed soldiers for their incompetence , Tennyson asserts that it was the from of the government and commanders
  • Owen sheers poem “ Mametz Wood ” set in WW1 describes commanders trying to tell generals that an attack would be suicidal but they were ignored. They were then blamed by generals for a lack of bravery. But the Welsh soldiers have since been vindicated and rehabilitated like the calvarymen in this poem
  • Tennyson was given the role of poet laureate,
• “Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred!”

  • Repetition of Honour create anaphora → imperative command to credit the soldiers of the honour they deserve
• “ Shatter’d and sunder’d Then they rode back, but not not the six hundred”

  • Rhythmic, sibilant “sh” and “s” sounds -and alliterative “d”s and also Hendiadys in “shattered and sundered”
  • Soldiers have to turn back - but not all of them as signified by the broken metrical pattern , Futher emphasised by the repetition of “not”
  • Soldiers are represented as numbers , they have no identity as individuals→ reader must imagine what this would mean for those that grieve for them
• “Into the valley of death … Into the jaws of death Into the mouth of hell “

  • The soldiers bravery refuses to let their natural desire for life to get the better of them
  • Hell represents the brutal terror and the fearsome of the battle. Reference to “Jaws” and “mouth” (which comprise a lexical field) shows a terrifying trap”
  • Biblical allusion to Psalm 23 where God offers protection “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death , I shall fear no evil.”
• “Theirs not to make reply , Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die”

  • Highlights the honest humble heroism of the men as there is no political point made (as Britain had no direct interest in the conflict )
  • Rhyming triplets → memorable → syntactic parrelism / Anaphora→ emphasising the real heroes of the story , the soldiers, who did not complain about the violence