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]

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