Thomas Hardy and Alfred Tennyson wrote two of the most famous pre WWI poems of all time, Drummer Hodge and Charge of the light brigade. However both of these poems were written in response to newspaper article not personal experience. Tennyson wrote Charge of the light brigade at the end of 1954 regarding the Crimean war. Tennyson uses repetition, allusion, and personification to paint a vivid picture of the charge fearlessly facing the “jaws of death”, and at the same time gives a glimpse into the psyche of the doomed soldiers. Tennyson frequently uses repetition, for example in the first stanza he repeats the phrase “half a league” three times in order to convey the strenuousness of the charge. It relates the fact that each league gained was a separate feat for the brigade.
In the first stanza he also begins the repetition of “rode the six hundred,” a phrase which highlights the small number of soldiers riding against the “mouth of hell” itself. Tennyson also includes the first reference to the “valley of Death” in the first stanza. This reference is continued throughout the poem. It is an allusion to the “valley of the shadow of death” in the Bible and describes the charge.
The allusion instill the the sense of fearlessness that the brigade has because the psalm the allusion is taken from speaks of how evil in not to be feared, not even in the shadow of death itself. “Cannon to the right of them, / Cannon to the left of them, / Cannon in front of them” is yet another repeated phrase in the poem it is found in the third and fifth stanzas of the poem. The repetition of this phrase adds to the claustrophobic feeling that began with the charge into the valley. It also reminds the reader that the cannon of the enemy are all that can be seen no matter where the soldiers look.
The Term Paper on Idylls Of The King Tennyson Poem Hallam
A Study Of The Life And Career Of Lord Alfred Tennyson And Selected Criticism Of His Works Whether a person likes or dislikes the works of Lord Alfred Tennyson, most would agree that he was one of the most influential writers of his time period. Tennyson grew up in a wealthy family never wanting for anything. English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. ...
Tennyson also provides an insight into the mental state of the men of the brigade. The first glimpse of the soldiers’s tate of mind comes with the idea of the valley of death. The reader is told that the soldiers face certain death, but the phrase, through its biblical allusion, tells the reader that the evil is face without fear. A more direct insight is given when he writes that the soldiers knew “Some one had blunder’d,” and that they knew their place was not to question orders but “to do and die.” The reader then knows that the men are blindly driven by loyalty and duty.
“Cannon to the right of them, / Cannon to the left of them, / Cannon in front of them” is another description Tennyson uses to take the reader in to minds of soldiers. This description allows the reader to see the battle as the soldier saw it. Regardless of where they looked, all that could be seen was certain death. Charge of the light brigade is also famous for its fantastic rhythm, likewise it is reminiscent of a ballad because of its set pattern and rhyming structure. The rhythm of the poem also helps with the imagery as it helps create an image of the soldiers with cannons firing steadily all around them in the mind of the reader.
The repetition also adds to the sense of rhythm in this poem. Charge of the light brigade is quite a long poem containing six stanzas, the sixth stanza being the shortest containing six lines, which seems not dissimilar to a conclusion, summing up the result of the Charge.
