Bayonet Charge Flashcards
Bayonet Charge: Context
- Ted Hughes was not actually alive during WW1, however his father fought in Gallipoli, a fact which may influence his thoughts and feelings on war.
- Hughes grew up in Yorkshire in a post-War society, not fighting in war but seeing the effects of war on his humble rural home.
- Bayonet Charge was from a collection of poems called “The Hawk in the Rain”, dedicated to his wife Sylvia Plath. The anthology focuses mainly on animals and their behaviours. This focus on animals is seen with the poems focus on instinctual behaviours.
“patriotic tear”
Hughes exposes how the patriotism that often compels people to go to war leaves them once they witness the visceral brutality of it. Hughes shows this when he writes “patriotic tear”, showing that patriotism is what compelled the soldier to go to war, and is what leaves him when he decides to save himself.
“king, honour, human dignity” “dropped like human luxuries”
- Hughes uses asyndetic listing to list out common reasons for people to go to war, saying “king, honour, human dignity”, building up an exhaustive list of reasons for people to go to war before contrasting it was “dropped like human luxuries” to show how they pale in comparison to the barbaric nature of war. The usage of the word “human” may be Hughes showing how it is a human trait to convince an organism to give up its life for a cause that actually has a minimal effect on it.
- Hughes may use his poem to show that when the pain of war hits a creature, its first instinct is to protect itself, with all “human luxuries” dropped. When first listing the reasons that people go to war, Hughes also adds “etcetera” almost to ridicule these reasons and to show how sick he is of hearing them, so much so that they do not bear mentioning anymore.
“cold clockwork”
Hughes uses harsh alliterative consonants in “cold clockwork” to re emphasise the mechanical and emotionless nature of war. “Clockwork” also emphasises how war will keep going on regardless of what happens around, completely blind to the suffering of the humans that fight in it.
“threshing circle”
- Hughes uses the hare as symbolic of the suffering of the soldiers. Hughes uses the hare to show how the ruthlessness of war affects all indiscriminately, and that therefore there are no winners in war. Hughes uses explicit violence and graphic imagery in order to fully communicate the suffering of the hare, saying it was in a “threshing circle”. The agricultural imagery of “threshing circle” may be alluding to how the soldiers are almost harvested, in that they are indiscriminately cut down and killed whereas the “silence” of the hare may be referring to how the soldiers are unable to speak on their plight.
- The general portrayal of the hare as suffering so dramatically may be Hughes trying to show how war has rendered the soldiers so desensitised to human suffering that it took the suffering of an innocent animal to break him out of his trance.
“lugging a rifle as numb as a smashed arm”
- Through the usage of a simile here, Hughes may be demonstrating how he views the soldier as dehumanised, used as a weapon of war. By likening the rifle to a smashed arm Hughes may be telling the reader that the speaker views the rifle as an extension of himself, being used as merely a weapon of war. The usage of the word “smashed” highlights how he feels that he is now useless, perhaps too scarred by war to fight any longer.
“sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest”
The same sentiment of the soldiers being dehumanised is repeated with the line “sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest”. Once more Hughes uses a simile to compare the soldier to metal, a key component of war, to once more show how the soldier is no longer human, rather he is just a small part of the war machine.
“suddenly he was awoke and was running”
Hughes also elaborates on the dehumanisation of the soldiers by showing the panic and terror going through a soldier’s mind. The poem begins in media res with “suddenly he was awoke and was running” to show how the solider is thrust into the heat of battle, with the suddenness of the start of the poem reflecting how the soldier feels thrust into a life threatening situation. Overall throughout Bayonet charge the soldier is shown as a machine, full of fear and panic and shown overall to be an unwilling participant in the war machine.
Bayonet Charge: Perspective
- Poem in third person singular, allowing the poet to focus on showing the reader how war impacts one person through the perspective of that person. By showing the war through the eyes of the soldier, Hughes makes it impossible to view war favourable, rather the soldier’s abject terror is rubbed off on the reader.
- The singular perspective also focuses on the isolation felt by soldiers, thrust into a life or death situation with no means of hope or comfort. Hughes presents it as ironic that in an army of thousands each and every one feels so lonely.
- Hughes writes in a third person singular form perhaps as he has no first hand experience of war
Bayonet Charge: Lack of rhyme scheme
- There is a clear lack of rhyme scheme within the poem, with lines never bearing any form of audible similarity to the ending of the line before them.
- This may be Hughes intentionally attempting to communicate to the reader the absolute lack of regularity and order within the soldier’s experiences of war, with every new moment bringing another challenge and another surprise.
- The lack of rhyme scheme also creates an atmosphere of discomfort and nerviness for the audience who are never able to settle into a rhythm and regularity, rather they are forced to listen to the soldier’s anguish with every line being something new.
Bayonet Charge: Enjambment
- The entirety of the first stanza is one sentence. This maintains the cadence of a bayonet charge, allowing the reader to fully feel the panic and terror of the soldier.
- By his generous use of enjambment Hughes stops the reader from pausing to take a break. This creates an atmosphere of breathlessness and chaos, once more not allowing the reader to get comfortable or settle into a rhythm whilst reading the poem. This once better allows the reader to empathise with the soldier. The enjambment also meant that many lines flow into the next unhindered, perhaps trying to mirror how the terrifying moments of war blend into one stream for the soldier.
Bayonet Charge: Caesura
- Hughes uses the caesura in order to slow the poem down. This fact is very salient in the second stanza, especially when compared to the first. In the first where the soldier is making a madcap dash with his troop as a part of the bayonet charge there is a lot of enjambment, contributing to the fast pace. This is contrasted with the use of the caesura in the second stanza, where the soldier is deliberating war, the philosophy of it and his role in it.
- The frequent use of the caesura and enjambment throughout the poem make the poem not flow and make it confusing, perhaps intentionally in order to portray the confusion a soldier feels during war.
Bayonet Charge: Brief summary
Hughes presents a frantic soldier charging into battle, showing us his thoughts and emotions as he moves. Hughes explores the priorities of a soldier in the heat of the moment in war whilst also looking at the reasons people normally go to war. He indicts the abuse of the soldiers and the lies they are told in order to persuade them to make the ultimate sacrifice.
