The Charge Of The Light Brigade

The Brook

What I want to do here is to write about the techniques used by Tennyson in these two poems.

The main difference is the subject matter; one is about the battle in Crimea war where many of the British soldiers were killed in the charge and the other is a poem about a fast flowing stream, following it’s journey from the start to the sea.

The Charge Of The Light Brigade is about death and destruction and the other one The Brook is about the beauty of nature, they both are Tennyson personal viewpoint.

One is how he saw the battle and the mistake there were made by those in charge:

“Some one had blunder’d. ” many men lost their lives.

The Brook tells of the journey to the sea and is very descriptive of the beautiful things rather than the horror of the war:

“For men may come, and men may go” this suggest that Tennyson was comparing the shortness of men’s life with a relative permanence of the natural world.

Tennyson uses different stanzas in both poems, for example in The Brook he uses 13 stanzas of equal length, each having a very regular rhyme scheme which provides a neat and tight structure for the poem, whereas in the poem of the Light Brigade Tennyson uses 6 stanzas of unequal length for example in the 1st stanza which he used 8 line, 2nd stanza he used 9 line, 3rd stanza he used 9 line and 4th stanza he used 12 lines.

Tennyson uses techniques of Alliteration, Rhythm and Assonance.

In the Charge Of The Light Brigade Tennyson uses alliteration a lot, particularly by repeating hard consonants to add to the sound of horses galloping:

Volley’d and thunder’d”

“Flash’d all their sabres bare,”

He also repeats soft consonants, “s”, “th”, “sh”, “ch”, “w” to lengthen and slow down some parts, to vary the rhythm:

“Storm’d at with short and shell,” etc.

To gain the attention of the reader the technique he used is rhythm. He uses rhythm in a fast pace; short lines and frequency of rhyming words contribute ...

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Tennyson uses techniques of Alliteration, Rhythm and Assonance.

In the Charge Of The Light Brigade Tennyson uses alliteration a lot, particularly by repeating hard consonants to add to the sound of horses galloping:

Volley’d and thunder’d”

“Flash’d all their sabres bare,”

He also repeats soft consonants, “s”, “th”, “sh”, “ch”, “w” to lengthen and slow down some parts, to vary the rhythm:

“Storm’d at with short and shell,” etc.

To gain the attention of the reader the technique he used is rhythm. He uses rhythm in a fast pace; short lines and frequency of rhyming words contribute towards a very jerky and brisk rhythm, reminiscent of horses galloping in to the valley:

“Half a league on ward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.”

Tennyson uses assonance in the poem of ‘The Charge Of The Light Brigade’ by making a repetition of long and short vowel sounds and to make it a manipulation of rhythm. So line contains short vowel sound, in order to shorten the line:

“Rode the six hundred” others have long vowel sounds predominating: “there’s not to reason why”

He uses metaphor and personification by saying:

“In to the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell”

What Tennyson is trying to bring out of this is to personifying two abstract concepts, death and hell, by presenting them as terrifying monsters to add the frightening quality of experience.

In the poem The Brook, Tennyson the uses technique of alliteration in the first stanza;

“ I came from hounts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley”

These contrast with harder sharper consonants to add to a sense of stopping and starting, lengthening and shortening. This use of hard consonants is the same as the way he uses the repeating of hard consonants in the poem the Light Brigade.

The rhyme Tennyson uses in the Brook is a strange rhyme and which have regular rhyme scheme of alternate lines rhyming to holds the poem together despite the irregular line length and rhyme.

“I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come, and men may go,

But I go on for ever.”

This type of rhythm can also seen been used in the other poem.

The use of assonance technique in the Brook is the similar vowel sounds that was used in the other poem, which the vowel- sounds are repeated regularly to slow up and speed up the lines.

The difference in techniques Tennyson used in The Brook is the line length is very irregular, some are longer than others. The line length in the other poem is some are shorter than other, which gives the poem a brisk pace and sometimes the lines get broken up in to shorter clauses:

“Half a league,

Half a league”

The similarities and differences between the two poems was the two poems use onomatopoeia in the way they are describing in details of their rhythm and shape, for example the horses hooves in the Light Brigade and the fast Flowing water in the Brook. There are some irregular rhyme scheme, irregular line length and irregular stanza length been used in the Light Brigade and which the other poem has a very regular rhyme scheme and stanza length, although the line length are short.

Both poems use repetition; the use of repetition in the Light Brigade is more effective, in lines like:

“Their’s not to make reply,

Their’s not to reason why,

Their’s but to do and die”

The use of repetition in the brook stresses the main point of the poem, in lines like: “For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.”

The two poems are about 50 lines in length, but the brook has more detail with faster-paced. The Light Brigade looks like the poet wrote it and contains some speech marks:

“Forward, the light Brigade!” but in the Brook it looks as if it was written by itself.

The light brigade contain evidence about the way Tennyson feels about war particularly about this war:

“Some one had blunder’d:

Their’s not to make reply,

Their’s not to reason why,

Their’s but to do and die:”

In this two poem I preferred The brook because is much more descriptive and because it have a philosophical message of how men can come and go but it will be there till the end:

“For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.”