T he Ch ar ge o f

the L igh t Bri ga de

Tennyson
In a nutshell …

 In his poem “Charge of the Light Brigade”

Tennyson describes the valiant charge of
the light brigade into the “jaws of death.”
He makes use of repetition, allusion, and
personification to paint a vivid picture of
the charge, and, at the same time, he
gives the reader a glimpse into the
psyche of the valiant soldiers.
Yo uTu be Cli p

 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pXzCOlPHF

 1936 film version – starring Errol Flynn.

Th e Cr ime an War, 1854

 First media war – photographers and reporters

were capturing the events in ways they never
had before.
 The story of the light brigade’s charge in the
battle of Balaclava was brought to the
breakfast tables of Britain only 3 weeks after it
happened.
 It is a breathless account of how a few hundred
cavalrymen mounted a doomed charge against
the Russian artillery.
 It was an emotional showstopper.
Th e Ba tt le of
Ba la cla va
 The war and the stories reported back to the
people at home encouraged artists to depict
epic canvases of the war scenes they had
heard of.
 According to a reporter at the scene of the
battle, there was confusion over the cavalry
orders – this was not uncommon but was the
first time a civilian was there to witness it.
 The men effectively charged to their deaths.
Th e reporter st ate d:
 "They swept proudly past, glittering in the
morning sun in all the pride and splendour of
war. We could scarcely believe the evidence of
our senses! Surely that handful of men were
not going to charge an army in position? Alas,
it was but too true - their desperate valour
knew no bounds, and far indeed was it
removed from its so-called better part -
discretion." William Howard Russell.
Pu blic Opin ion
 Public opinion was very much a part of this
war.
 The Battle of Balaclava was seen as a blunder.
 But it was a gloriously executed blunder - and
the men who took part in the charge acquired a
kind of celebrity status, part of what William
Howard Russell called a "band of heroes".
Re cord ing of t he Po em
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/tennyson.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/tennyson

Or alternatively, a reading with visuals:

 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JD9RKx8pk00
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english
Interpretations AO 4
 In the 20th Century, the image of military
sacrifice acquired a very different character. In
1916, the Battle of the Somme saw 60,000
British casualties in a single day - and the
poets of the First World War saw nothing
heroic about such an appalling loss of life.
Tennyson wrote: "Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die."
 And Kipling supplied a reply in a comment on
WWI: "If any ask us why we died,
Tell them 'Because our fathers lied'."
Interpretations AO 4
 Re-interpretations of the Charge of the Light
Brigade pointed up the failings of aristocratic,
self-centred generals, who appeared to have
little concern for casualties.
 In the 1950s, the historian Cecil Woodham-
Smith wrote ‘The Reason Why’, which blamed
upper-class rivalries of Lord Lucan and Lord
Cardigan for allowing the cavalry charge.
Interpretations AO 4
 This view of distant, incompetent aristocrats ignoring the better
judgement of professional soldiers was reinforced by the 1968
movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade.
 But there have been more recent challenges to this - with military
historian Terry Brighton saying the film owed "more to class war
than the Crimean War".
 Mr Brighton's book, ‘Hell Riders: The True Story of the Charge of
the Light Brigade’, argued that the charge was much less of a
military disaster than it might have appeared.
 In numerical terms, the event would not have registered
significantly on the casualty figures. There were 673 men in the
charge - of which probably fewer than 200 died.
Sig nif icance t o our
context
 The charge of the light brigade lives on
as a phrase that has become part of the
language - and an example of unthinking
bravery - in an event which the Times
recorded as an "atrocity without parallel".
Glo ssa ry

 Half a league – about one and a half

miles
 Sabres bare – unsheathed swords
Th e Po et
 This poem deals with an important political
development in Tennyson's day. As such, it is
part of a sequence of political and military
poems that Tennyson wrote after he became
Poet Laureate of England in 1850.
 These poems reflect Tennyson's emerging
national consciousness and his sense of
compulsion to express his political views.
St ructure
 Each line is in diameter which means it has two
stressed syllables.
 Moreover, each stressed syllable is followed by
two unstressed syllables.
 This makes the rhythm dactylic which means
one long syllable followed by two shorter.
 The use of "falling" rhythm, in which the stress
is on the first beat of each metrical unit, and
then "falls off" for the rest of the length of the
meter, is appropriate in a poem about the
devastating fall of the British brigade.
Rh yt hm a nd St ru cture
 The rhyme scheme varies with each stanza.
 Often, Tennyson uses the same rhyme (and
occasionally even the same final word) for several
consecutive lines: "Flashed all their sabres bare /
Flashed as they turned in air / Sab'ring the gunners
there."
 The poem also makes use of anaphora, in which the
same word is repeated at the beginning of several
consecutive lines: "Cannon to right of them / Cannon to
left of them / Cannon in front of them." Here the
method creates a sense of unrelenting assault; at each
line our eyes meet the word "cannon," just as the
soldiers meet their flying shells at each turn.
In me dia r es

 What does it mean?

 How can we link this to the narrative
structure of ‘The Charge of the Light
Brigade’?
Ef fectiveness o f the
Po em
 This poem is effective largely because of the way it conveys the
movement and sound of the charge via a strong, repetitive falling
meter: "Half a league, half a league / Half a league onward."
 The plodding pace of the repetitions seems to classify all
individual impulsiveness in one collective action. The poem does
not speak of individual troops but rather of "the six hundred" and
then "all that was left of them." Even Lord Raglan, who played
such an important role in the battle, is only vaguely referred to in
the line "someone had blundered."
 Interestingly, Tennyson omitted this critical and somewhat
subversive line in the 1855 version of this poem, but the writer
John Ruskin later convinced him to restore it for the sake of the
poem's artistry. Although it underwent several revisions following
its initial publication in 1854, the poem as it stands today is a
moving tribute to courage and heroism in the face of devastating
defeat.
Re petit io n

 Highlight examples.
 Analyse the effects of the technique –
how does it support the writer’s
intentions/purposes?
 Can you identify alternative
interpretations of the use of the
technique?
Re petit io n

 ‘half a league’ – arduousness of the

charge? Gallop of the horses?
 ‘cannon to …’- claustrophobic feeling;
enemy are all that can be seen from
every angle.

 Any other examples?

Pe rso nif ication

 How is death personified?

 Analyse the effects of the technique –
how does it support the writer’s
intentions/purposes?
 Can you identify alternative
interpretations of the use of the
technique?
Pe rso nif ication
 ‘jaws of death’- shifts the poem to a more
carnal tone. The brigade is pitted against
the ultimate beast that threatens to
devour them.
 Kill or be killed.
 ‘jaws of death’ and ‘mouth of hell’ –
repeated images.
 What is the reader supposed to imagine?
All usio ns
 ‘Valley of Death’ (twenty-third Psalm of the
Bible) – reference to the ‘valley of the shadow
of death’.
 Serves to instil in the reader a sense of the
fearlessness that the brigade has – the psalm
speaks of how evil is not to be feared, not even
in the shadow of death itself.
 What else might a reference to a valley make
the reader think of?
An alyse Te nnyso n’s
use o f:
 Metaphor
 Alliteration
 Many verbs
 Rhetorical questions
 Analyse the effects of the techniques – how
does it support the writer’s
intentions/purposes?
 Can you identify alternative interpretations of
the use of the technique?
Psyc he of t he b rigade
 ‘Some one had blundered’ but they know
their place and they don’t ask questions -
‘to do and die’.
 What does this tell us?
 What motivates these men?
 How does Tennyson allow the reader to
experience the battle as a soldier would
have? What effect does this have?
Psyc he of t he b rigade

 How does the reader view the men

based on Tennyson’s depiction of their
experience?
 Why does Tennyson not name or single
out any of the 600 men?
 Is it a fitting tribute to the soldiers?
Explain why/why not.