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

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I just clicked over to the quiz without looking at the rest of your post, and did exactly the same as you. Tennyson is my favourite poet, for the record.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that; he very specifically uses noise-related language, comparing the pounding of the artillary to a storm. So yes, it's dangerous, but it's _also_ noisy. And I seem to remember he was quite into sensory imagery and near-onomatapoiea (which I can't spell), although I can't think what I've read of his that has left me with that impression.

[marjory.livejournal.com]

I just did that test too and thought the same as you. I would have argued that storm'd and thunder'd were verbs of sound. I guess that 'danger' is just more of a general answer... or the BBC like telling us we're thick! ;-)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Mutliple choice questions are a stupid way to test interpretation of English literature.

[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!)

[j4.livejournal.com]

There isn't a 'right' answer; there's the text, and interpretation(s) of the text. FWIW I think you'd have a hard time defending the 'anger' one, but that "WRONG!" from the BBC is exactly the sort of attitude that puts people off Eng. Lit. at school.

[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.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, I do agree. They're OK for the "have you actually read the text at all" questions, but as j4 says below being told that your interpretation is WRONG! is not helpful.

[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.)

[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. :)

[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...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I couldn't agree more with this.

It was years after having had to do O-level Eng Lit before I actually voluntarily started thinking about interpreting the books I was reading.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I thought this might help.

[uitlander]

Indeed, and as with most humanities related things the answer isn't black and white and my answer would be more along the lines of 'a, c and a whole bundle of other things I haven't thought of yet'. The whole point of that sort of thing is to be evocative, and its not necessarily a 1:1 relationship.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Answer 1 is the correct answer, because according to the particular prejudices of whichever literature professor the Beeb got to write/mark the quiz, backed up by whichever high-falutin' but essentially bogus lit crit theory is currently in vogue, Answer 1 is the correct answer.

Unfortunately, the idea that there can be multiple correct answers to a lit crit question... is not currently one of the high-falutin' but essentially bogus lit crit theories that is in vogue. Maybe back in the 60s & 70s.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Ha! "It's a bloody stupid question" could surely describe 90% of lit crit questions. :p

[venta.livejournal.com]

Why does one never get low-falutin' theories ? Is the proponent of such theories a falautist ? Have you ever faluted ?

Enquiring minds need to know.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Oh, possibly it's back in vogue, in some universities -- or at least, was back when you were an undergrad. Give it another year or two... ;)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time learning about statistics, experimental design and subject selection, and doing practicals, I object to the inclusion of psychology in that list :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

If you're not familiar with it, I'd heartily recommend the poem Dear Mr Lee (http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/488.html) by U A Fanthorpe.

Apparently Fanthorpe wrote it after she realised that she was teaching Eng. Lit. in a way that prevented pupils from actually liking the books they were reading.

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

I did the quiz and got caught out like you. I think my old English teacher would spit blood if English answers were made so cut and dry like that. In my day we were taught that you can claim whatever you like about a text, as long as you can find the quotes in there to back you up.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

That's all right then, and you're right; there's as much fashion in sciences as there is in arts.

I've just spent so much time arguing with people who regard psychology as closely allied to flower arranging that these days when it seems to be equated with arts subjects I tend to go all rabid pitbull at people.

This is not, incidentally, to imply anythign negative about arts subjects. Arts subjects require all sorts of cleverness, and I'm always way impressed by the stuff Eng Lit graduates know and write :) Arts subjects just require an entirely different philosophy and attitude, which I twitch at when I think they're being ascribed to a science subject like psych.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. D'you know, I don't think I've got a favourite poet. This surprises me.

Other than obviousness like the Light Brigade, the Lady of Shallot and that droopy woman in her moated grange and I'm not really very well up on my Tennyson. If you're care to suggest a couple of less hackneyed poems for my education, that'd be lovely.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Any word which has more than three vowels on the trot loses the right to be spelled correctly.