Bayonet Charge Flashcards
Form
Third person singular - isolation felt by soldiers in war, battle about self-preservation. The poem’s highly focused on one soldier’s emotions which is ironic as soldiers were expected to show no emotion. Highes depicts a soldier immune to the death of other soldiers, it takes the suffering of nature to break his trance-like state.
Structure
Repetition of “raw” creates a sense of desperation, giving animalistic connotations which denotes a lack of humanity in the situation, reminiscent of stuttering as if the soldier is experiencing a breakdowj in rationality as a result of their anxiety and stress.
Enjambment stops the reader from taking a break or pause, quickening the pace of the poem, the whole of the first stanza is a single sentence for the reader to empathise with the panic and fear felt by the soldier
Caesura - second stanza pace much slower, soldier stops to consider the philosophical meaning of war, listener pauses and considers reality of war
Enjambment and caesura make poem feel disjointed - war can’t be understood fully
Free verse, enjambment, caesura and rich, complex imagery combined make the poem difficult to read, the listeners’ struggle to understand is representative of the struggle experienced by the soldier
Language
Use of metaphors -
The soldier may have literally “awoke” in response to a threat, but he could also have gained awareness of the reality of war
He soldier “was running” shows he’s no longer protected by the safety associated with sleep and the safety of denying war’s reality for the favourable view presented in propoganda. It”# possible the events before this moment were comparable to sleeping and disconnected from actual fighting, Hughes suggests this might be due to the “patriotic tear(s)” that mean it’s only when soldiers arrive on the frontline that the effects of propaganda wear off and the true horror of war is realised
Lexis
Hughes combines lexis from the semantic field of body parts and violence with metaphors dehumanising the soldier to blur the lines between human and weapon, suggests humans are used as weapons in war:
“Lugged”- implies he’s not physically adept enough to carry, physically unprepared for the hardship and strain of war
“Blending of body and weapon”
Similes portray soldiers as unprepared for war “he lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm”: implying the soldier seems disconnected from his weapon and has physically unsuitability for his role, the rifle’s presented to ne numb and cold showing how unnatural the soldier deems committing acts of violence.
The six similes in the poem imply there’s no way for Hughes to accurately describe what war is like.
Asyndetic listing when describing values of “king, honour, human dignity” to show how the soldier gains honour from fighting, but when faced with death and war, these values are “dropped like human luxuries”, this shows how in war, just as the hare’s personified, the soldier reverts to animalistic instincts as human values are lost(fluid relationship between animal and human reminds the reader of the soldiers’ innocence and vulnerability)
Use of natural imagery
The hare is a symbol of soldiers’ collective suffering, the hare’s “threshing circle” and its “mouth wide, open silent” show the explicit violence and graphic descriptions of war missing in the rest of the poem: Hughes tries to show the soldier’s so immune to the death of humans it takes a new kind of suffering, that of an innocent animal, for him to be shocked out of his trance and into instinctive action.
Describing the surroundings
Nature a victim of war-
simple childish description of a “green hedge” transformed into focus of bayonet charge, a symbol of death as it “dazzled with rifle fire”
Soldiers charge across “a field of clods”- the earth provides obstacles for the soldiers to trip over instead of sustaining life
