1a. What does the speaker say about the orders given to the soldiers?
2a. What does the speaker say is a soldier's duty?
3a. What language does the speaker use to describe the valley where the battle takes place?
4a. Compare and contrast stanzas 4 and 6. What technique is the poet using? Which lines are different, and which lines are the same?
5a. How well does this poem tell the story of the Battle of Balaklava? What parts of the story could be missing? How well does the poem recreate the setting and mood, or atmosphere, of a horrible battle scene?
1b. Why would the soldiers charge knowing that the command is a mistake?
2b. How do the soldiers' actions demonstrate the sense of duty that the speaker describes?
3b. Explain why these descriptions help you understand what is happening to the Light Brigade.
4b. Rewrite in your own words the section of the story found in each of these stanzas. How does the poet's technique emphasize these two parts of the story?
5b. Using what you know about war and military capabilities today, explain how a modern battle scene might differ from the battle described in this poem.
Narrative Poem. Review the graphic organizer you made to identify passages in the poem that reveal information about the setting, the protagonist, the conflict, and the resolution. Create an additional column on the right side of the chart. In it, rewrite in your own words the passages you identified for each category. What is the setting of the poem? Who are the protagonists? What is the conflict? How is the conflict resolved?
Suspense. Review the examples of detail you found in the poem that contribute to the suspense. What adjectives does the author use? What are some of the action verbs? How are these details effective? What details would you use if you were writing a suspenseful narrative about a battle?
Repetition. How does repetition contribute to the suspense and the mood in this poem?
1. Make a list of words you associate with war. Then write a short story using those words.
2. Write a letter from a survivor of the Battle of Balaklava to his family at home, telling of the event.
3. Write a narrative poem about a conflict you have experienced.
Adjectives, Adverbs, and Antonyms. Make a list of at least ten adjectives and adverbs in "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Find an antonym (a word with the opposite meaning) for each adjective and adverb. Then write a narrative poem of your own, using the new adjectives and adverbs. For more information, see the Language Arts Survey 1.20, "Learning Synonyms, Antonyms, and Homonyms" and 3.65, "Modifiers."
Looking at Word Formation. Look back at "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and note the shortened words that end in 'd. What other word is shortened with an apostrophe? Rewrite the words from the poem that contain apostrophes, removing the apostrophes and spelling out the complete words. What letter or letters did you need to add to the words that ended in 'd? What rule of grammar led you to do so? What letter or letters did you add to the other shortened word? Why do you think Tennyson shortened these words as he did?
