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CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
Hello, welcome to another tutorial video. This time we’re going to be looking at ‘The
Charge of the Light Brigade’.
So we start off looking at structure and we’ve got everything split into different stanzas.
There are little episodes or snippets of what’s going on. So we start off with the men, what
they were told to do and then we’re told about how brave they were, about going into
it. Then we’re told about the dangers they faced. Then we’re told about the little
victory they had, the mini victory. Then we’re told about the retreat, or the return, that
was doomed as well, and then we’re told to honour them. So we’ve got these little
snippets focusing on different things, and that’s really useful because it allows us
to concentrate individually on each thing and take as much as we can from each stanza.
Then we’ve got the rhyme all the way through which is irregular but it really helps build
the rhythm and pace and stops and starts at different times. So here we have ‘onward’,
‘hundred’, ‘said’ – obviously the ‘d’ here is what I’m looking at and
the ‘hundred’ and here we have ‘Brigade’, ‘dismay’d’, ‘blunder’d’, ‘reply’,
‘why’, ‘die’ and the ‘hundred’, so again it’s quite irregular but all the
way through it builds its own pace, it’s very rhythmic, like it makes you ebb and flow
with it as it goes, which gives us the idea of them charging and someone dropping off
dying and then charging and someone dropping off dying, etc., etc., etc.
We’ve got the refrain which adds huge emphasis – a lot of the stanzas end with this and
then changes slightly. So the emphasis here is ‘Rode the six hundred’, ‘Rode the
six hundred’, ‘Rode the six hundred’, ‘Noble six hundred’. So when that changes,
the fact that that refrain has just changed there is really powerful because it allows
us to think about the numbers and now that number is no longer one whole unit, even though
the rest of the time it was talking about the whole unit. We don’t get to hear how
many died, we just know in this that some people died but we still remember them all
with the same respect; those that lived and those that died, etc.
The last structural point here we’ve got is the other voice that’s actually come
in. We’ve got ‘Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns, he said’, ‘Forward
the Light Brigade!’ and both those kind of calls and the fact that one’s a repetition
of part of the other just allows us to show how ill thought out this was and how there
wasn’t a wider range of understanding or parameters actually put into it, it’s just
‘forward’, that was the only thing they were given, you know, ‘forward’. It wasn’t
looking at the situation and tactically working out what would be best. It was just ‘forward’
and ‘charge’. Charging there basically means going forward as well, so really we’ve
just got this repeated idea which obviously Tennyson’s commenting to us was moronic
for this battle in particular, but that doesn’t take anything away from the soldiers, from
the men. So what meanings do we get from it? What themes
do we get from it? The idea of bravery comes through very, very strong. ‘Was there a
man dismay’d?’ No, because they were brave and they knew what they had to do, and as
they went across they ‘flash’d their sabres bare’, they attacked with swords and they
were really going about trying to do the best that they could in the given situation, and
the fact that ‘all the world wonder’d’, this is taken in two ways and one of them
is to do with the bravery, they would just marvel at how these men just rode into certain
death – as we’ve put here ‘the valley of Death’, to actually try and win the war,
win this battle for their side.
We’ve also got the idea of foolish commands in – as I mentioned earlier – the repetition
or the similar repetition, or the similar feel we say we should get from this, and also
that someone had blunder’d, the idea that someone had made a mistake in telling them
what to do, whoever the ‘he’ here is. And this has just given us a ‘he’, rather
than someone specific because this poem doesn’t just refer to the incidents here, but in a
wider sense to all bad commands with wars and if you link this to some of the World
War One poetry that you’ve actually come across in this and probably at other times
in your reading, you’ll know trench warfare and how that was just a complete and utter
instant waste of life.
Here we have the idea of reputation; some of the reputation here is positive, that first
of all we have the poem in and of itself and it’s called ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’
which is in itself, the wording in it ‘The Charge of the Brigade’, the very powerful
and very uplifting, they were trying to do something positive in terms of the war with
what they were doing and the reputation is extended as they plunge into the smoke and
they broke through the line and then they need to be honoured, that’s mentioned several
times, so that reputation that they actually have is very, very important. And the honour
that we actually get from them, doesn’t afford them, what we’re supposed to feel
for them, war isn’t just from the repetition of honour, but we also get that from the fact
that they’re called ‘Noble’, the fact that the world wonders about them and how
they’ve actually gone about this and how they were just so willing to do and die, and
that’s very important in their honour, we have to respect them and honour them because
they were willing to go to the extremes to try and win this battle.
We move on then to images and one that comes across very slowly is the cannons, and just
the tactical arrangement of this battlefield, it’s to the right of them, to the left of
them, in front of them and then on their return it’s to the right of them, to the left of
them, behind them and it just gives us a very encompassing sense and the images of guns
and gunfire from all sides at all times, when they were going in and when they were coming
out. So even this strike that they actually manage to make, it wasn’t enough to do anything
here when they broke the line and they made this strike here, it wasn’t enough to actually
make a lasting impression, or lasting damage on the enemy because then they were still
shot to bits on the way back. We’ve got the language here, the metaphor
of the guns volleying and thundering and storming; so the onomatopoeia there is really powerful
because it gives us a real sense of how tumultuous being in the middle of that would have been
and moreover the metaphor of this power of nature, shows what they were up against. Because
no-one can really stop thunder from striking, or stop a storm from storming and in using
these words Tennyson makes it clear to us that these men had very little opportunity
of coming out of here alive because it was something so powerful that they were facing.
The religious imagery that I wanted to pick up on was here where we have the ‘valley
of Death’ mentioned and also the reference to Hell – they’re coming out of the mouth
of Hell – and in the mouth of Hell in some texts is actually guarded by creatures, in
some places it’s a monster, in some references it’s a kind of angel, a version of an angel;
which basically allows people in or out and in the return of the 600 we see that some
people have been allowed to leave and some people haven’t, and I think that’s important
because they’ve gone into the mouth of Hell and some of them have died and I think that’s
why he uses it here, to give us that religious sense and obviously this sense that comes
with death, etc., and he’s writing this at a time when the country would have been
far more religious than it is now, so people would have adhered to this imagery in a far
more striking way than perhaps we do. The idea here of the valley of Death is taken
from the Bible and the capital ‘d’ on Death there, is in reference to Death personified
as the Grim Reaper, who’s hanging out here to take peoples’ lives.
We’ve also got the image of breaking the line and I think this is stark because what’s
said about them here - ‘Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but
to do & die’ and that section there is talking about their bravery but we only see it in
this moment here and it’s very powerful. They break through just momentarily, they
‘flash’d all their sabres bare’, the flash there is the idea of light and goodness
and the righteousness. ‘Flash’d again as they turn’d in the air Sabring the gunners
there, Charging an army while All the world wonder’d:’ and they plunged. So there’s
this sabring, charging, plunging, it’s just the idea of them being heroic and doing all
the right things and being – I want to say manly, but that’s a bit sexist – being
very aggressive and just being how you’d want your soldiers and your army to be, just
really fighting and then they ‘broke through the line’ and the enemy ‘reel’d’ from
every swing and they were ‘shatter’d & sundere’d’. Rent asunder basically means broken into bits.
But that might be a slight over-exaggeration because they’re not shattered, they’re
not broken to bits because the gunfire comes from all the same positions as it did earlier,
so whatever effect this has had, has had actually a small effect but it’s put in the most
glorious way.
So the image that Tennyson wants us to take from this is of this really heroic effort,
but ultimately makes very little difference because they’re under exactly the same pressures
before and after and it doesn’t make an ultimate difference, at least in this part
of the poem and that’s why we get the idea here of – I’ve put – doom/glory/doom
because they’re doomed before they get there, then they’ve got this small bit of glory
and then they’re doomed again and that’s interestingly put because it shows the futility
and the moronity of this command.
In language then, we’ve got repetition all the way through and you’re just going to
talk about how that adds emphasis and you’re also going to talk about how it links us back
to other part of the poem so that we can really understand the play.
The force of nature and the elements mentioned there – sorry I mentioned that a little
earlier on earlier.
We’ve got the alliteration when we’ve got the w and w this – the world wondered
– and that’s really powerful because it allows us to think about how vast that is,
it makes it stand out and think about the entire world wondering about it and ironically,
this battle was made famous by this poem, so the world does wonder at it indeed because
of the poem perhaps, more than just their bravery, which is a testimony to poetry but
a testimony as well to the power of the writing here and how it really can be linked and taken
and drawn upon for so many wars and battles that have occurred and we’ve got a lot of
language – I think I’ve mentioned this already – a lot of language that’s heroic
and deserving – ‘Theirs but to do & die’, ‘Noble six hundred’ a little later on,
‘they fought so well’ here, they’re called heroes, etc., so all that type of language
is all very positive, showing how they’re heroic and honouring them, it shows us how
they’re deserving, etc.
So what effect does this have on us? Well it reminds us of the courage of soldiers and
trying to fight even in the most improbable of situations. It allows us to feel for the
soldiers, given bad commands but how they didn’t disrespect or disobey, they still
went off into the charge. And it allows us to consider, or invites us to consider commands
that are given from – are these the men best placed to do this or should we be allowed
perhaps, or should soldiers be allowed perhaps to not follow through on something? But then
obviously that opens up whole other perambulations, but you can just think about all those different
elements.
I hope that was useful.
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