bayonet charge Flashcards
‘suddenly he awoke and was running-raw’
in medias res:
↳ the soldier is unprepared for war
↳ makes us feel part of the soldier’s thoughts & feelings - like he’s confused
focus on ‘awoke’:
↳ the man has only just grasped the reality and true horridness of the situation & has come out of his trance
↳ could be a flashback due to PTSD, which he will experience again and again, a nightmarish experience
focus on ‘raw’:
↳ vulnerability, raw emotions, panic, fear, stress
‘bullets smacking the belly out of the air’
b’ plosives:
↳ aggresive tone, brutality of modern warfare
personification, onomatopoeia: ‘smacking’
↳ bullets do the smacking (a seeming child like punishment), however war isn’t childish, these themes contrast to one another and create an irregular feeling, just like how the soldier feels (out of place)
↳ the description sounds very abnormal because thats how the world feels to the soldier
‘the patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye’
oxymoron: ‘patriotic tear’
↳ patriotism is a proud, positive feeling, while tear is a sad, negative feeling, this represents how patriotism being used as a reason to fight in isn’t good enough, the quote is in past tense to show that he no longer cries due to his country & is no longer motivated by patriotism
focus on: ‘tear’
↳ a tear makes your sight blurry and makes you unable to see clearly, patriotism blinds the truth to war
‘sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest’
simile
↳ molten iron is very hot and can damage a human, this represents how war affects a person
↳ molten iron is malleable, like the soldier’s patriotism/motive to fight which changes in the play
‘he almost stopped - in what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand pointing that second’
caesura:
↳ emphasises next line, stops us like the reader stops when the question overwhelms him
plosives: ‘c’
↳ war has a harsh reality
↳ he is harshly criticising himself - existential crisis, he is existentially insignificant in the grand scheme of war, which is why his life is so easily taken
↳ the hand of a clock is only a small part of how it works
focus on: ‘stars and nations’
↳ connotations of fate, he is questioning his fate and where he belongs
focus on ‘clockwork’
↳ clockwork is routine and uncomplicated yet, soldiers are expected to work smoothly and without stress in a chaotic and stressful environment as though they are machines
‘threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame and crawled in a threshing circle’
verb: ‘threw up’
↳ suggests the helplessness of the hare in the face of the human onslaught
personification: ‘threw up’
↳ the furrows perform a human action as they “threw up” the hare, this creates an image of it vomiting out the hare from the earth, disorder of nature
‘hare’
↳ could represent the natural world, man’s destructiveness overcomes the normal rhythms of innocent nature, inversion of natural order
↳ hare can symbolise pride (the tortoise and the hare) -> this can demonstrate how the prideful human nature will always suffer consequences just like the hare met its ending in a brutal manner
verb: crawling
↳ innocence of nature
↳ desperation of nature
‘king, honour, human dignity, etcetera dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm’
‘h’ alliteration:
↳ connotations of something heavy, these things used to be motivations for him
↳ these reasons weighed him down & stopped him from surviving
simile: ‘like luxuries in a yelling alarm’
↳ the simile emphasises how easily the soldier dropped his morals & patriotism in favour for survival (juxtaposition with ‘patriotic tear’)
alliteration: ‘like luxuries’
↳ ‘I’ sound rolls off the tongue like the soldiers decision
focus on ‘etcetera’:
↳ patriotism doesn’t matter anymore, only survival,
↳ sounds like mocking, he believes that things like patriotism as reasons to fight are ridiculous
semantic field of glory:
↳ bitter recital of why he joined the war (he doesn’t care anymore)
‘his terror’s touchy dynamite’
alliteration: ‘terror’s touchy’
↳ ‘t’ sound represents his fear and how at the slightest touch he will explode like dynamite
themes of bayonet charge
mistreatment of soldiers, futility of war, patriotism, honour & glory
structure
-the length of the last four lines get progressively shorter, as if he is being consumed by the horror and words are disappearing in the face of overwhelming desperation to survive. he wants only to escape
-disorganised, no rhyme or structure to represent the soldier’s state of mind
context
-ted hughes was brought up in the countryside and had a passion for nature
-father was a WW1 veteran who had survived the massacre of his regiment
who wrote bayonet charge?
ted hughes
