The Charge of the Light Brigade — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The poems
What you need to know
Tennyson tells how six hundred British cavalrymen, obeying a mistaken order, charged down a valley into the Russian guns, fought, and rode back far fewer, and calls on readers to honour them.
How Tennyson's galloping rhythm, repetition, refrains and imagery of death and hell celebrate the soldiers' obedience and courage while admitting the blunder behind the charge.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Half a league, half a league', 'Into the valley of Death', 'Some one had blunder'd', 'Their's not to reason why', 'Their's but to do and die', 'Cannon to right of them', 'Into the jaws of Death', 'Then they rode back, but not', 'When can their glory fade?', 'Honour the Light Brigade'.
Form: six stanzas of uneven length in a dactylic rhythm (one stressed and two unstressed syllables) that imitates galloping horses, with refrains built on six hundred, repeated lines such as Cannon to right of them, and short, chant-like lines.
Context: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), Poet Laureate from 1850; the charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, in the Crimean War, caused by a misunderstood order from Lord Raglan, in which about 670 men rode at the Russian guns and over a hundred were killed; and Tennyson's poem, written from reports in The Times and published in December 1854, which turned the disaster into a story of heroism.
Compares well with: Exposure (glory against the misery of war), The Destruction of Sennacherib (an army of horsemen and a galloping rhythm), The Man He Killed (soldiers following orders) and Belfast Confetti (the Crimean War names of Belfast's streets).
