HUMA
1100 Reflection Paper #4
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet of The Charge of the Light Brigade, uses his poetry to convey the
experiences of the soldiers involved in the charge by utilizing poem structure
to give visual aid of war order, word usage to provide imagery of battle, and dactylic
syllables to provide sounds of battle. These three tools each provide a way for
the reader to understand the experiences of the soldiers in such short but
powerful writing.
When looking at the poem initially, the reader sees a few
things regarding the structure. Firstly, each stanza is roughly the same length
give or take a line or two, and each line within each set of stanzas are
roughly the same length. This simple observation aids the reader in visualizing
soldiers in a line marching forward into battle. Secondly, the reader notices
as they begin to read, that there is pattern that follows. Each line is short
and to the point, almost as if they are similar to what it would look like to
write down the orders or instructions given by the military leaders. Tennyson
even writes a few of his lines to imply quotations coming from these imagined
military leaders. He writes, "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the
guns!" which are to be interpreted as a call to action given by a leader.
Tennyson's use of imagery aids the reader in imagining
for themselves where the soldiers are in battle in regards to enemy lines
because he gives a description of their location within each stanza. In the
first stanza Tennyson begins by saying "Half a league, half a league, half
a league onward," which lets the reader understand that the soldiers are
not quite to the enemy lines, but that they are closing in quickly. In the
Third Stanza, he gives a description of where the soldiers are in relation to
the enemy's cannons as they approach the enemy lines: "Cannon to right of
them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them". Then as they
progress deeper into battle, the fifth stanza explains their location in
regards to the cannons "Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them".
Along with the imagery of the soldiers location and
progression amongst the enemy line of defense, Tennyson provides descriptive
word usage that lets the reader imagine the soldiers grueling point of view during
the progression of battle. He begins to describe the battle field as the
"valley of death" which is very appropriate when he continues onward
with the rest of his descriptive words of war such as: " jaws of Death",
"mouth of Hell", "battery-smoke", "Storm'd at with
shot and shell", and finally "horse and hero fell". Putting
Tennyson's gruesome words together leads the reader to understand the difficult
battle for the soldiers.
Dactylic meter is used by Tennyson to provide sound to
convey the experience of the soldiers when the reader reads this poem aloud.
Dactylic meter is when one stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed
syllables, and reading a poem correctly can prove to have more depth to it than
just the word meanings. In just two lines of Tennyson's poem ,"Cannon to
right of them, Cannon to left of them" we can hear the intended sounds of
cannon fire due to the dactylic meter, and one could arguably say the sound of
horses hooves pounding the ground as they gallop into battle.
Utilizing these three poetry tools, Tennyson is able to
convey the experiences of the soldiers in The
Charge of the Light Brigade by providing visualization of military order
within the stanza's structure, imagery to give perspective of the soldiers
location in battle or their view of the battle, and finally Dactylic meter to
provide a soundtrack of war cannons. Tennyson understands that in order to
enhance and add depth to his writing, application of poetry tools provide the
reader with a deeper connection and understanding of his work.
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