Poem - The Charge Of The Light Brigade Flashcards
What war is this poem about?
Crimean war
This poem has dactylic dimeter. What is dactylic dimeter?
Dactylic Dimeter means there is one stressed syllable, followed by two unstressed. This happens twice a line.
What is the “O” in line 50 called?
An apostrophe
The tone after line 25 changes. This happens because the soldiers die after they go…
Into the mouth of hell
Lots of the lines start with the same sound. This makes the poem’s message seem bigger. What technique is this?
Anaphora
The alliteration in “while all the world wondered” slows the reader down. This…
Gives the reader time for reflection
The sibilance of “sabre-stroke, shatter’d and sunder’d” means that…
The 4 words are linked in the readers mind
The onomatopoeia of the “un” in “thunder’d” represents?
The sound of cannons firing
Why is dactylic dimeter used?
Sounds like a galloping horse
Throughout the poem each stanza starts with “[verb] the six hundred”. This changes in stanza 4…
When it ends “NOT the six hundred”. This implies that the six hundred are no longer doing anything: they have died.
Line 13-15 is famous phrase which stays in the memory because of its rhyme.
“Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die”
This quote is a biblical reference from Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is where David says he won’t be scared of Goliath even though he is smaller; because he believes in God. The six hundred are like David.
In the valley of Death
This quote could show how the poet Tennyson was using his positon to question the morality of war, by describing it as sending men into…
the jaws of Death
Tennyson was not part of the war, he read about it in newspapers. What effect does this have?
The poem has a distant quality and reflects the glorification of war by those not involved
Tennyson presents the view that taking orders and serving ones country is honourable
Theirs was not to reason why, / theirs was but to do and die
