Bayonet Charge Flashcards
Themes (4)
- Effects of conflict: Exposure: effect of nature on soldiers
- Reality of conflict: Charge of the light Brigade: representation of war, battle, soldiers, Remains, Kamikaze: duty in war, Poppies: different viewpoints of war, Exposure: presentation of soldiers
- Fear
- Individual experience
About
A soldier suddenly awakes in the middle of battle, running. He is confused and lost and meditates on his own identity and place in the world. Struck by an image of a hare running, he tries to escape and survive, leaving all his ideals of war behind.
Big Ideas (4)
- War and the reality of conflict
- Fear and confusion
- Politics
- Death and power
Semantic field of struggle/violence, “raw”, “stumbling”, “dazzled”
Reality of conflict
Fear
Raw: wound, opened up, discomfort, already injured, repeated again to reinforce pain
Stumbling: unable to manage, already barely surviving, falling motion
Dazzled: stunned, semi-blinded, unable to see clearly, disorientation, extent of the surrounding rifle-fire
“bullets smacking the belly out of the air”
Reality of conflict
Fear
Onomatopoeia and personification: violence, force, harsh/punishment, painful, aggressive, slapping sound
Creates a noise, reinforces loudness and overwhelming atmosphere
Reflects what damage it could do to a human if that is what it is doing to the air, death, his body is being attacked
“he lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm”
Reality of conflict
Individual experience
“lugged” = struggle
“Numb” = overcome with pain, dehumanised, unfeeling
“smashed arm” = useless, no purpose, the weapon is useless as it cannot defend him from the onslaught of bullets, more for attack than defence as he needs it for
Assonance (two similar sounding stressed sounds close together in a non-rhyme (sound of uh here)) in “lugged” and “numb” give impression of heaviness, exhaustion, struggle
“Smashed” = violence and destruction
“In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand pointing that second?”
Fear, confusion
“Cold” = unfeeling, uncaring nature of Governments and leaders
“Clockwork” = machinery, pre-destined
“Stars” = fate. Is it already decided or can he act to influence his life, is his death already decided, his life is in the hands of the countries at war, he is simply an instrument of their territorial gain not an actual human, to them his life doesn’t matter
“Was he the hand pointing that second” = is he about to die
Rethinking the idea of war and his point as a soldier at the moment of maximum danger
“threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame”
Power of nature
Showing something so innocent is killed by something so violent
Only other thing in the poem
Reader questions what it was done to deserve it and feels sympathy, anger towards war
May be foreshadowing the soldiers’ fate
Parallels the life of a soldier
Flame = dangerous, violent, painful death
“king, honour, human dignity, etcetera Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm”
Power of nature – questions beliefs and motives
“King, honour” = patriotism
All reasons for going to war and risking life with almost certain death, however the dismissive “etcetera” and “dropped” shows were they worth it? They were all reasons thrown at him due to the listing but now when he may die, he doesn’t care about them and actually they don’t matter vs before when they did but now he has the realisation that his own life is more important even if the leaders don’t think so
“yelling alarm” = the wakeup call that these don’t matter, anger, pain, a desire for life, dreading death
“His terror’s touchy dynamite”
Power of nature – questions beliefs and motives
Alliteration shows knife-edge tension the soldier experiences
His fear feels like explosives, dynamite = gunfire
“t” sounds harsh, reflects tough conditions and the harsh motion of bullets flying at him
Feels like he could explode any moment: 1. Anger, emotionally, 2. As he questions his existence, 3. He is exhausted and physically strained, 4. The gunfire is threatening his life
Structure (6)
- Enjambment – fast pace of war, non-stop, constant strain, fear, gunfire
- Present tense – creates a feeling of movement and continuous motion
- Poem starts ‘in medias res’ – in the middle of the action creating a disjoint feeling, frantic pace and terrified thoughts of the soldier
- Stanza 2: caesura, slight pause, stopping to think and reconsider deeper meaning, slows down
- Free verse: unpredictable nature, sense of chaos in war, no knowing when he will die
- No punctuation: participating in war, playing along his part and fighting until the punctuation comes in and he rethinks
Context (4)
- Hughes is a contemporary English poet who imagines WWI emphasising the legacy of the war as insane and unfair compared to what the soldiers faced
- His father served in WWI and he grew up in the aftermath of WWI
- The soldier goes over the top of the trenches and runs into no-man’s land which was very dangerous and often resulted in many casualties and deaths
- The soldier seems to become more of a weapon than a soldier, only used to win the war instead of valued as a human being
