Poetry allows an author to relay a message to a reader through different literary devices and each reader can interpret the author’s words differently. However, in this poem, the author makes his point clear. Lord Tennyson Alfred uses syntax, different figures of speech and abstraction in the poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” to illustrate the honor and heroism of the six hundred in the valley of death.
Tennyson uses syntax to create an irregular poem that does have some repetition. There are six stanzas but they all have an irregular sound pattern. However, there are places in the poem that the words at the end of the lines rhyme without having the same letter endings. For example in stanza two lines five through seven, the final words end with the “y” sound, “Theirs not …show more content…
There the cannons “volleyed and thundered” (Tennyson) surrounding the soldiers from every angle, leaving nowhere for them to go but to stay and fight. The soldiers have to “charge for the guns” (Tennyson) but the soldiers only have swords to fight with. The soldiers never gave up or retreated from battle solely because they had swords instead of guns, but instead, they fought until the enemy was running away. Although Tennyson illustrates a picture of the soldiers using swords, the swords provide a symbolic representation of heroism in the soldiers. In ancient days, battles were won by who was the best swordsman and the winner was seen as an honorable and noble man. This remains true for the poem. Tennyson also uses personification and metaphors to focus the reader’s attention on two specific lines in stanza five. In lines eight and nine of stanza five, the author says the soldiers “Came through the jaws of Death/Back from the mouth of hell” (Tennyson) the few that were left from the six hundred came out from the battle alive. The author uses personification when giving the valley a jaw and a mouth. In a metaphoric way, Tennyson then