Bayonet charge Flashcards
Context and motivation behind bayonet charge
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
What happens in bayonet charge?
Soldier wakes up charging at the enemy
Suddenly stops to contemplate what he’s doing
Shows a hare who got caught in an explosion
Opening of the poem
‘Suddenly he awoke’
Effect of the opening word
Sudden introduction to the conflict in the middle of the action
Reader is unaware of previous conflict
Reflects the confusion and suddenness soldiers feel
Enjambment
‘Then the shot-slashed furrows
Threw up a yellow hare’
Effect of Enjambment
Verse break creates disjointed effect on reader
Reader feels same uneasiness and unpredictability of conflict as the soldier
Caesura
‘Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running’
‘Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows’
Effect of caesura
Both examples situated in the second verse therefore the reader, like soldier, has to stop and think
Repetition
‘running - war/ in raw-seamed hot khaki’
Effect of repetition
Repeated word in a stressful situation shows the writer is having trouble expressing the events that transpired
Almost effect of stuttering
Why does Ted Hughes use a lot of similar aspects of Wilfred Owen’s poems
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
Why did Hughes make the poem so laborious to read?
Using complex language structures = reflection of tired soldiers struggling through mud
Similes
‘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’
Why does he use so many similes?
The feeling is so horrible and indescribable he has to liken it to something else through similes
Nature imagery
‘Bullets smacking the belly out of the hare’
‘Threw up a yellow hare’
Effect of nature imagery
To demonstrate the bad impact war has on nature
‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and nations was he the hand pointing second?’
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
‘Cold clockwork’
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
Attitudes to war at the beginning
‘Patriotic tear that brimmed in his eye/ Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest’
Effects of attitudes to war at the beginning
The patriotism and eagerness to start war now leaving his body as a deadly material
Negative vocabulary in stanza 1
‘hot’ ‘raw’ ‘stumbling’ ‘smashed’ ‘lugged’
Why does he use so much emotive vocabulary?
Reflects how the soldier himself feels and overload of suffering, physically and mentally
The most complex simile?
‘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
Why does Hughes use the complex running simile with so many unnecessary words?
He wants the reader to struggle through it
Enables the reader to feel the same laborious process the soldier has
Quote showing attitude war at the end of the poem
‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera’
What is Hughes saying about attitudes to war at the end of the poem?
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
Use of the pronoun ‘he’
Not about any specific person because it applies to everyone
A general critique of all war
Final line of the poem
‘His terrors touchy dynamite’
Effect of the last line
The soldier has now become a killing machine
