“half a league”
is repeated, this repetition shows just how many men were marching to their deaths, and how far they had travelled. Repeated twice through stanza one is the metaphor,
“in to the Valley of Death”
which shows an image of the soldiers marching to a horrible place, where most of them will die. In stanza one, speech is used,
“Charge for the guns!”
this shows Tennyson’s attitudes towards high ranking officers and how he thought that the soldiers were forced in to death defying tasks without any argument back. The stanza ends with the line,
“rode the six hundred”
it was repeated in the middle of stanza one, but at the end it provides a perfect image of six hundred men riding to their deaths. Stanza one focuses on Tennyson’s views on soldiers and what they were doing, setting the scene.
The second stanza focuses even more deeply on the soldiers and how they have no rule over what they do and are like puppets. The rhetorical question,
“Was there a man dismay’d?”
asks the reader if a soldier was unsure about what they were about to do was right. Tennyson expresses the fact even more deeply that soldiers really had no control over their orders with arguably the three most famous lines in the poem,
“Their’s not to make reply, Their’s not to reason why, Their’s but to do and die”
this explains that Tennyson thinks that solders’ lives were not important to the officers, and that they were to do what they were ordered to or die. Tennyson again ends the stanza with
“rode the six hundred”
emphasising the image.
The third stanza opens with
“Cannons*****
giving the image that they had charged in without a thought, but were completely surrounded. This shows Tennyson’s feelings for the soldiers and how alone they really were as the officers sat in safety. In the quote,
“Storm’d at with shot and shell”
Tennyson has used alliteration to emphasise the “shhh” sound shells and shots would make, showing the fear in the soldiers, but who do not show it. Tennyson uses the word “bold” to express his feelings of bravery towards soldiers who ride in to death defying places. Tennyson shows his view of war, that it is just a fight in to the
“jaws of death”
using this metaphor to show that soldiers are only going to death, nothing else can be gained of war.
Stanza four focuses on the actual fight, with Tennyson again showing the soldiers never ending bravery and fearless actions plunging in to the battle,
“sabres bare”
shows them preparing. In this stanza, Tennyson shows his one view on society,
“while all the world wonder’d”
shows his thought to the poor mothers and wives of the soldiers, waiting at home, praying for the safety of their loved ones, it shows society’s black out to the Crimean War.Tennyson ends the stanza in a similar but strikingly different way,
“They rode back, but not Not the six hundred”
Shows how they rode back, as though they had won, but Tennyson manages to put in a powerful feeling that people had just lost their lives, and not all of the six hundred were returning.
Stanza five is a huge emphasis on all Tennyson has written, he picks out some of the most powerful lines and puts them in to a stanza, while adding some more truly powerful lines, such as, “While horse and hero fell” shows Tennyson referring to the soldiers as heroes, showing how brave he thinks they are. Tennyson ends the verse by repeating the common metaphors “the Mouth of Hell” and “Jaws of Death”, but this time how the survivors came back. Tennyson again powerfully ends the stanza with, “All that was left of them, Left of the six hundred” Again, showing how many lost their lives at this battle.
In the last stanza, Tennyson focuses formally on the soldiers, their bravery and how, to him, they will never die, but live on in honour and memories, using direct language as if telling us to remember them too.
“Honour the charge they made. Honour the Light Brigade. Noble six hundred”
