Exposure

Charge of the Light Brigade

This poem is the real meaning of a war. Soldiers aren’t discriminated for dying, they are glorified instead, and they have been honoured by people. There was no right to send the soldiers into such a horrific battle; it was a huge mistake for it to happen.

In the first stanza the soldiers are riding into the battle, they are on their way to fight. There is a positive rhythm throughout the poem. ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward’. In this line it is as if the horses are riding as the words in the poem are being said. It feels like you are there with the soldiers, horseback, like you can hear the horses riding underneath you. In the poem a few lines are repeated for different reasons. ‘All in the valley of Death rode the six hundred’. This line is repeated many times to show how the soldiers don’t stop, they carry on fighting, and they ride into and through the valley with no fear. It is also repeated to show how it is like a title, as some of the words have capital letters, ‘Death’ and ‘Rode’. It has no punctuation around the line to show that they have no fear, because they believe there is life after death.

James Bradwell gives the soldiers a huge order in an astonishing way. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’ This line looks like a plain order, but the comma after forward is showing how the soldiers have a massive sense of disbelief, it is like he has said the command and the Light Brigade can’t believe what he has said, so Bradwell orders them by name, to get the message across to the dumbfounded soldiers, who can’t believe what is going on. The soldiers go in for the charge, towards their own death. ‘Charge for the guns’. Tennyson has used this line to show that the soldiers have no fear; they just have to show honour for their country with great pride, they have to do what has been ordered, and they can’t compromise. The exclamation mark has been used to emphasise how it is a command, and not an option to go into...