Providing an in-depth response to a question from the power and conflict anthology about ideas surrounding conflict. Includes A-level grade analysis.
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Explore how the poems ‘The Charge of The Light Brigade’ and ‘Bayonet
Charge’ explore themes of conflict. (30)
Both works ‘Charge of The Light Brigade’ and ‘Bayonet Charge’ explore the dynamic elements of war
in divergent ways - where Tennyson employs a regimented structure composed in retrospect,
adulating the victims of war - Hughes’ work is stressed, amplified by the absence of a conformed
rhyme scheme and plethora of enjambment that distils both works focal theme - the futility of war.
Both works begin in media-res, parallel to the nightmare of ‘awoken’ in order to accentuate the
urgency of conflict in Hughes poem - lines are sporadic in length and indicates an absence of a
definitive goal, hinted at by the ‘stumbling’ and links to vulnerability in ‘raw’ is further metaphoric for
the men themselves, or perhaps the homophone can be interpreted as the ‘roar’ of conflict, assigning
predatory characteristics to the opposition in WW1. Similarly, Tennyson places emphasis on this
media-res through his employment of anaphora in ‘half a league onward’ - the plethora of
prepositions in ‘onward… forward’ indicate a definitive goal, reinforced by the dactylic dimeter that
establishes a constant rhythm mimicking the effort. Yet the ‘league’ could potentially be interpreted
as a competition - this subverts the macabre nature of conflict, revised again by the ‘sabre-stroke’
which is overtly oxymoronic, drawing comparison between cavalry and playfulness/softness, where
this sibilance serves to mimic this whistling of gunfire and infantry.
Both works place emphasis on setting, specifically in Tennyson's poem and the ‘valley of death’
alluding to Psalm 23 and Lord is My Shepherd: this draws links to ‘fearing no evil,’ where patriotism
makes them oblivious to death, furthermore notorious in funeral readings reinforcing these macabre
and inevitable elements of death and command, where the soldiers are sheep. Moreover, Tennyson’s
appointment as Laureate stresses the phonetics within the poem; ‘rode the six hundred’ where this
‘rode’ coincides with the valley, highlighting this inevitability of death. Whereas Hughes places
emphasis on the ‘green-hedge’ throughout his work, potentially metaphoric for the regimented enemy
lines - this ‘field of clods’ that symbolise ‘lumps’ almost categorise these men, subtracting any identity
and contest the theme of patriotism throughout the poem. Tennyson inverses this, where ‘some one’
had ‘blundered’ - division of ‘someone’ echoes this idea of interdependence, and now the ‘six hundred’
are expected to compensate. Whereas in Hughes poem, the conflict appears towards nature, hinted by
the ‘yellow hare’ that ‘rolled’ - language from semantic fields of conflict and ‘rolling’ visualise
concealment, where this ‘hare’ has its ‘mouth…open silent’ - potentially symbolic for this allusion to
the ‘Mouth of Hell’ where conflict is predatory, and the ‘roar’ of the battlefield silences all horror. The
‘hare’ symbolises the trapped - it has been hunted for centuries as a part of the harvest cycle, yet this
is not naturalistic: now, the protagonist is only left with animalistic instinct to seek shelter. Tennyson
also capitalises on sibilance and rhetoric language to distil this silence on the battlefield, serving to
communicate the ‘fading’ of this ‘glory.’ Moreover, Tennyson's incorporation of pathetic fallacy in
‘storm’d’ and ‘thunder’d’ inverse this ideology of man against nature, where this darkness serves to
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