Bayonet charge

Question 1

Context and motivation behind bayonet charge

Answer 1

His father served but now traumatised, wanted to show terrible affect of war in his personal life
Grew up in Yorkshire still mourning WW1
Inspired by Owen who represents his fathers experience

Question 2

What happens in bayonet charge?

Answer 2

Soldier wakes up charging at the enemy
Suddenly stops to contemplate what he’s doing
Shows a hare who got caught in an explosion

Question 3

Opening of the poem

Answer 3

‘Suddenly he awoke’

Question 4

Effect of the opening word

Answer 4

Sudden introduction to the conflict in the middle of the action
Reader is unaware of previous conflict
Reflects the confusion and suddenness soldiers feel

Question 5

Enjambment

Answer 5

‘Then the shot-slashed furrows

Threw up a yellow hare’

Question 6

Effect of Enjambment

Answer 6

Verse break creates disjointed effect on reader
Reader feels same uneasiness and unpredictability of conflict as the soldier

Question 7

Caesura

Answer 7

‘Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running’

‘Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows’

Question 8

Effect of caesura

Answer 8

Both examples situated in the second verse therefore the reader, like soldier, has to stop and think

Question 9

Repetition

Answer 9

‘running - war/ in raw-seamed hot khaki’

Question 10

Effect of repetition

Answer 10

Repeated word in a stressful situation shows the writer is having trouble expressing the events that transpired
Almost effect of stuttering

Question 11

Why does Ted Hughes use a lot of similar aspects of Wilfred Owen’s poems

Answer 11

It’s a second hand poem so he has to take inspiration from those who actually experienced it
Because war is so indescribably bad even he can’t come up with it

Question 12

Why did Hughes make the poem so laborious to read?

Answer 12

Using complex language structures = reflection of tired soldiers struggling through mud

Question 13

Similes

Answer 13

‘Numb as a smashed arm’
‘Sweating like molten iron’
‘running/ Like a man who has jumped up in the dark’
‘Rolled like a flame’
‘Dropped like luxuries’

Question 14

Why does he use so many similes?

Answer 14

The feeling is so horrible and indescribable he has to liken it to something else through similes

Question 15

Nature imagery

Answer 15

‘Bullets smacking the belly out of the hare’
‘Threw up a yellow hare’

Question 16

Effect of nature imagery

Answer 16

To demonstrate the bad impact war has on nature

Question 17

‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and nations was he the hand pointing second?’

Answer 17

Stars = Hughes was interest in astrology. Perhaps the soldier is considering if divine or spiritual intervention is what caused this pain
Nations = government and power is what caused this. Soldier is debating why he’s there

Question 18

‘Cold clockwork’

Answer 18

Alliteration = guttural creating a harsher tone
‘Cold’ = both aspects have apathy to the soldiers situation
‘Clockwork’ = the soldier is simply a tiny cog in the large picture of war. Won’t make much of a difference despite suffering so much

Question 19

Attitudes to war at the beginning

Answer 19

‘Patriotic tear that brimmed in his eye/ Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest’

Question 20

Effects of attitudes to war at the beginning

Answer 20

The patriotism and eagerness to start war now leaving his body as a deadly material

Question 21

Negative vocabulary in stanza 1

Answer 21

‘hot’ ‘raw’ ‘stumbling’ ‘smashed’ ‘lugged’

Question 22

Why does he use so much emotive vocabulary?

Answer 22

Reflects how the soldier himself feels and overload of suffering, physically and mentally

Question 23

The most complex simile?

Answer 23

‘He was running like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs listening between his footfalls for the reason of his still running’
= he was running like a man who realised he was in a bad situation

Question 24

Why does Hughes use the complex running simile with so many unnecessary words?

Answer 24

He wants the reader to struggle through it
Enables the reader to feel the same laborious process the soldier has

Question 25

Quote showing attitude war at the end of the poem

Answer 25

‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera’

Question 26

What is Hughes saying about attitudes to war at the end of the poem?

Answer 26

These human values he lists mean nothing once in war
A harsh critique of people’s patriotic attitude to war
Etcetera = there are other values but they’re too pointless to list out

Question 27

Use of the pronoun ‘he’

Answer 27

Not about any specific person because it applies to everyone
A general critique of all war

Question 28

Final line of the poem

Answer 28

‘His terrors touchy dynamite’

Question 29

Effect of the last line

Answer 29

The soldier has now become a killing machine