Bayonet Charge

Question 1

Key theme/surface meaning?

Answer 1

set around conflict that is a soldier running out of the trenches on attack however the poem also looks at ideas like transformation of humanity and nature.
Misuse of power

Question 2

Deeper meaning?

Answer 2

Inner conflict, the reason we go to war are lies, War is meaningless. In matters of war and survival, nothing noble matters. A single moment can define your fate.

Question 3

Quote 1 and explanation?

Answer 3

‘bullets smacking the belly out of the air’ - Personified bullets and semantic body parts with ‘belly’ and ‘smashed arm’ blurs the line between weapon and man by dehumanising the soldier and personifying the weapons.

Question 4

Quote 2 and explanation?

Answer 4

‘In what cold clockwork’ - Clockwork, A metaphor for his actions as being more like a clockwork machine than human. Trivialises war to a game of toy clockwork soldiers between nations.

Question 5

Quote 3 and explanation?

Answer 5

‘Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame’ - Metaphor, is it a real hare? Maybe a coward? Yellow is the colour of fear and hares are prey. Natural and frightened image juxtaposed with his own machine like nature. Possible that the hare is another soldier shot and scared, trying to escape. Dehumanising.

Question 6

Who is the poet?

Answer 6

Hughes

Question 7

Structure?

Answer 7

Irregular rhyme to mirror the soldiers struggle to run through the mud, uses pronoun he instead of his name to show he could represent any young soldier, universal figure