On, on, on cried the leaders at the back

[venta]

Can someone with a better knowledge of English literature[*] help me out here ?

I've been doing the BBC magazine's mini quizzes of multiple-guess GCSE questions. I did better than expected at my GCSE PE quiz, and got extremely cross with one of the questions in the GCSE maths quiz which I consdered to be impossible to answer.

Today it's English literature. I did pretty badly on it, mostly because I don't significantly remember Jane Eyre, haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird and apparently have inadvertently expunged all knowledge of Shakespeare from my brain. However, I take issue with this question:

In his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, writes: "Volleyed and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell." Why does he use such violent verbs?

The answers you're offered are:

1. To reinforce the danger faced by soldiers.
2. To reinforce the anger of the soldiers.
3. To reinforce the noise of battle.

I've read, but not studied, The Charge of the Light Brigade. I reckoned on 3 being the most plausible answer.

Says the BBC:

WRONG! He uses the verbs to reinforce the danger faced by the soldiers.

I can understand how you could argue for that, but I also think you could make a reasonable case for my answer (and probably even the remaining other answer). Either way, I simply don't understand how you can make a question like that have an such an absolute answer. Unless, of course, dear Alfred left copious notes indicating exactly what had been behind his choice of verbs.

Am I missing something ? Is there a good reason why answer 1 is the only correct answer ? Or is it just further evidence that multiple-guess questions are a ridiculous testing mechanism for some subjects ?

[*] I mean "the subject of Eng. lit. as taught in schools", rather than just "the body of literature in the English language". That these are so distinct may be telling.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I would argue for either 1 or 3 (but not 2). However, I think the point they're aiming at is that this verse is dealing with danger, and the next lines emphasise the danger and bravery:

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

(The first half reappears later in the poem in less cheerful mode but is still not really about noise.)

Which just goes to show that you cannot isolate questions like this and expect them to be sensibly and 'correctly' answered by people not presently studying for GCSE Literature i.e. the whole sodding exercise is pretty worthless. Writing about isolated lines is always dangerous (and this thought comes from someone who bluffed an entire university exam essay about Frankenstein from one isolated passage where context was really quite necessary for a good attempt!).

Thought 2: the whole poem (thinking about the metre, particularly) evokes the noise of battle, so it's a bit redundant to emphasise it with these lines (but I'm not denying that you can argue that it still does and I would not say it was wrong to do so!)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose they're expecting you to be familiar with the entire poem and thus able to answer the question with correct context. Perhaps the original paper made more sense depending on the questions which came before and after the one cited. I'd be interested to know whether the paper had the text of the poem on it, too.

Not relevantly, for GCSE we had to study one section of an anthology. With the deliberate exception of some fairly gutgrinding Auden, I learned by heart all the poems as part of my revision - I like poetry and find learning it reasonably easy. Of course, most of it's now fallen out of my head. Those that stick tend to be of the friendly metronome school; Betjeman and so on.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suspect either the text is on the paper or the exam is an open book paper (my A level was), in which case it becomes significantly easier to justify a POV answer, even a 'wrong' interpretation. I don't know about at GCSE level but certainly higher up it's not so much about right and wrong but about how you arrive at and explain your argument. It's possible (but probably not worthwhile) to write about 'the role of robots in Jane Eyre' or 'the anger of soldiers in The Charge of the Light Brigade' but unless you've got good textual evidence for your argument you'll not get far. I think you can make a credible, if perhaps slightly weak, case for "noise of battle" here, and the BBC are WRONG! to suggest otherwise.

(As j4 says, this is the kind of thing that makes people convinced they HATE literature/poetry, which is a huge shame.)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Bah. I want to read about the role of robots in Jane Eyre now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm sure if you ask oxfordgirl nicely she'll oblige...

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I thought this might help.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Jane_20Austen_27s_20colossal_20death_20robot

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I learned exam poems too (mostly Hardy at A level) - discovering I could sing most of them to known tunes helped! I love Betjeman for reciting aloud, but find Wilfred Owen comes to mind more often when I'm just idling. :)