🐇 bayonet charge Flashcards
Who is the poet of Bayonet Charge?
Ted Hughes
Summary of Bayonet Charge
A soldier is thrown into a battle completely unprepared. He is clumsy and confused. He pauses on the battlefield to consider his role in the war. A hare gets thrown in front of him from the fighting and it is dying and suffering in front of him which jolts him back to consciousness. He realizes the danger he is in and reverts to his instincts and runs towards the battle in fear
5 key quotes of Bayonet Charge
1) ‘Suddenly he awoke and was running - raw / In raw-seemed hot khaki’
- This thrusts the listener into the action and relates to the idea of waking up
- Action word and metaphorical awakening and becoming conscious
- The reader does not know what is happening, neither do the soldiers
- ‘raw’ is DELIBERATE REPETITION which shows the difficulty is expressing moment shock and waking up to a charge struggling to articulate the moment. It creates a sense of desperation. The connotations of ‘raw’ are animalistic which denotes a lack of humanity in the situation
2) ‘Bullets smacking his belly out of the air’
- Brutal fistful of words. Overloaded with emotive language to overwhelm the reader
- The plosives reflect the soldiers feeling
- This METAPHOR creates a tense, violent atmosphere and also alludes to someone being winded and unable to breathe
3) ‘Listening between his footfalls for the reason / Of his still running’
- Complex line so he wants the reader to struggle through the poem, weighed down by complexity and confusion
- The soldier begins to further question the reason for him fighting
4) ‘Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame / And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide’
- PERSONIFICATION associates the hare suffering with that of the human soliders
- Hare is a fast animal but even it cannot escape which shows the intensity and trigger point.
- Violent connotations of ‘threw up’ contrast with the innoncence connotated by a hare
- ‘threshing’ is violent thrashing of hitting weed to get the seeds out
5) ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcertera / Dropped like luxurities in a yelling alarm’
- Asyndetic listing
- ‘etcetera’ means that the list is not important and his tone is mocking.
- Criticises the patriotic values the soliders supposedly have. Nobel virtues of honour and human diginity means little or nothing when you’re facing the heat of a battle. We can also see it as a challenge, a suggestion that the nobel virtues of patriotism are million miles away from the reality of war - general critique of war
- The soldiers seem to have completely abandoned his previously upheld values and motivation to fight
Context for Bayonet Charge
TED HUGHES INFO
- He wasn’t born during WW1 but his father served and survived. Hughes didn’t experience it first hand but felt the effects of it on his everyday life through relationship with his father
- He grew up in the post-war era and saw its influence in his home in Yorkshire. “still stunned from the 1st world war”
Form and structure of Bayonet Charge
ENJAMBMENT
- Quickens the pace of the poem, whole of the first stanza is a single sentence to emphasize with the panic and fear felt by the soldier
CAESURA
- In the second stanza, where the soldiers stops to consider the philosophical meaning of war. The soldier is so overwhelmed that they are forced to pause and consider. The listener also pauses and considers the reality of war
OPENING IN MEDIAS RES
- The midst of the plot
- ‘suddenly he awoke’
- There is no warning of the fighting to come and the reader has no chance to prepare of it, this mirrors the shock the soliders would have felt going into battle
- Unconventional panic -> tense atomsphere -> confusion and panic
Key themes in Bayonet Charge
- The indescribable horrors of war
- Questioning the point of the war
- Presents the reality of war, but has to borrow from those who were actually there as war can never be understood by those who haven’t experienced it
- Realization of a solider’s insignificance
Personal perspective of the impact on individual soldiers
Poem to compare with Bayonet Charge
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
- S: Both criticize the leaders of war but more explicit in bayonet. Both propaganda is a powerful tool in the public attitude to war
- D: brigade prasies the blind obedience, but bayonet the perception of honour is challenged. Brigade praises bravery but bayonet encourages the questioning of war
EXPOSURE
- S: Both soldiers realized that war is largely different to what they have been told. Psychological element of fighting.
- D: Exposure soldiers are anticipating and are prepare to fight but bayonet shows extreme reluctance
REMAINS
- S: Present the psychological impact of war upon a soldier. Soldiers are scared which acts as a criticism of war. Both not written first hand
- D: Bayo is effect whilst the solider is still on the field, Remains is the impact after war
