bayonet charge Flashcards
what is bayonet charge about
Hughes depicts a soldier for a few seconds, desperately charging into battle. Synopsis
● A soldier is thrown into a battle completely unprepared.He pauses on the battlefield to consider his role in war ●
A hare gets thrown in front of him from the fighting ● The hare is dying and suffering in front of him which jolts him back to consciousness
● He realises the danger he is in ● Reverts to his instincts and runs towards the battle in fear
context on author
Ted Hughes was a famous war poet. However, as he wasn’t alive during WW1 and was a child during WW2, he never fought or saw war firsthand. Hughes grew up in the post-war era and saw its influence in his home in Yorkshire. This rural upbringing is evident in his poetry which usually focuses on animals. Hughes studied mythology which is shown in the image of the yellow hare as well as anthropology which is shown through the poem’s fixation on instinctual behaviour
significance of the time it was written
The poem was published in 1957 but was set in WW1. His poems are a way for him to make sense of the events he never saw but whose impacts were seen daily Hughes’ father fought in WW1 and was one of only seventeen Lancaster Fusiliers to survive the Gallipoli campaign, leaving him emotionally traumatised for life. It is thought that in Bayonet Charge Hughes wanted to highlight the brutality of trench warfare as a tribute to his father’s suffering as well as a way to memorialize war as a warning for future generations.
structure
Hughes employs a chaotic structure in his poem to mirror the chaos and panic of war
Enjambment stops the reader from taking a break or pause which quickens the pace of the poem. The whole of the first stanza is a single sentence. This matches the tense action of the poem and maintains the momentum of a bayonet charge and helps the readers to empathise with the panic and fear felt by the soldier. The enjambment helps to emphasise the importance of the rhetorical question it ends on – “was he the hand pointing that second?” . Here, the reader is forced to question whether the soldier is at war by his own choice or is a mechanical cog in a constantly ticking clock.
The poem opens with “suddenly he awoke” which instantly lunges the reader into the action without any introduction. By opening in Medias Res (the midst of the plot) there is no warning of the fighting to come and the reader has no chance to prepare for it, this mirrors the shock soldiers would have felt going into battle.
main idea 1
violence
lexis
humans used as weapons in war
‘he lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm’
‘cold clockwork of the stars and the nations’
Hughes’ combines lexis from the semantic field of body parts and violence with metaphors which dehumanise the soldier to blur the lines between what is human and what is weapon. This allows Hughes to suggest that humans are used as weapons in war. ● “lugged” – implies he is not physically adept enough to carry – physically unprepared for the hardship and strain of war
‘numb’ desensitised
cold clockwork of the stars and the nations = This suggests the war turns individuals into tools to be used. Humans, nature and weapons all merge through Hughes’ metaphors and similes, this reflects how humans become weapons and nature becomes a human-like victim in the face of war. The government, represented by “the nations”, uses the soldiers like tools, their lives made meaningless and their bodies useful only as cannon fodder. The mixing of roles within the poem demonstrates this meaningless waste of human life
The harsh alliterative consonants in “cold clockwork” reinforce the cold, calculated mechanical nature of war. The poem implies that the soldiers are treated as pawns in a game rather than individual lives. “Clockwork” conjures a sense of war being calculated and mechanical, as if the soldiers are being used as physical tools rather than sentient beings.
main idea 2
surroundings being chaotic
‘bullets smacking the belly out of the air ‘
‘dazzled with rifle fire’
This metaphor creates a tense, violent atmosphere and also alludes to someone being winded and unable to breathe.
Hughes poses the argument that nature is a victim of war through his use of personification. He described the “bullets smacking the belly out of the air”. Here, the active verb “smacking” serves to demonstrate the violence inflicted on the air. This is emphasised through the use of harsh plosive sounds in “bullets” and “belly”. The personification of the air as having a “belly” allows the reader to have sympathy for the effect of war on nature. Through describing it in human terms they are more able to relate to the abuse. Peaceful images are juxtaposed with the violence of fighting showing the contrast between life and death. The simple, childish description of a “green hedge” provides a peaceful, innocent symbol of (plant) life. This is transformed into the focus of the bayonet charge, a symbol of death as it “dazzled with rifle fire”.
natural imagery
animals= nature
‘ its mouth wide
Open silent, its eyes standing out’
In Bayonet Charge the Hare is used as a symbol of soldiers’ collective suffering. Hughes projects the violence of war onto an innocent creature accidentally caught up in the war. The explicit violence and graphic descriptions of war missing in the rest of the poem are provided through the hare’s “threshing circle” and its “mouth wide, open silent”. Hughes is trying to show that the soldier is so immune to the death of humans, that it takes a new kind of suffering – that of an innocent animal – for him to be shocked out of his trance and into instinctive action as “he plunged past” away from danger
the “yellow hare” is made a victim with its “mouth wide open silent” like a human scream. The hare’s suffering is the only explicit sign of violence, and the infliction of pain on an innocent animal highlights the injustice of war, as organisms completely unconnected to the conflict are being harmed
