Bayonet Charge Flashcards
Brief plot summary
The soldier awakens mid-action, stumbling forward under gunfire. His body reacts instinctively but his mind lags, overwhelmed by fear. Time seems to slow as he questions his purpose. Patriotic ideals collapse under the immediacy of survival. He becomes dehumanized—a “machine” of war—lunging toward a hedge glittering with rifle fire. The poem ends abruptly, leaving his fate unknown but emphasizing war’s brutality.
Context
Hughes’ father, a WWI veteran, survived the Gallipoli campaign—a traumatic battle that left deep psychological scars. This familial link influenced Hughes’ bleak portrayal of war.
Hughes himself served as a mechanic in the RAF (1950s), though not in combat, exposing him to military culture and machinery, which may explain the poem’s mechanized imagery.
Written after WWII and during the Cold War, the poem challenges patriotic propaganda that glorified sacrifice. Hughes instead exposes war’s dehumanizing chaos.
Reflects modernist disillusionment, akin to Wilfred Owen’s WWI poetry (“Dulce et Decorum Est”).
Structure and Form
Free Verse & Irregular Rhythm
No set rhyme or meter → mimics the unpredictability of war.
Lines vary in length (e.g., short, abrupt lines vs. longer, flowing ones) → reflects the soldier’s erratic thoughts or the soldier struggling through the mud
Enjambment (sentences spill over lines):
→ Creates a breathless, uncontrolled pace, like the soldier’s desperate charge.
Caesura (mid-line pauses):
→ Forces the reader to pause, emphasizing the soldier’s mental breakdown.
The poem begins in medias res (“Suddenly he awoke and was running”) → thrusts the reader into the chaos, denying context or preparation, just like the soldier.
Stanza 1: Sudden action – the soldier is thrust into battle The pace is frantic, reflecting panic.
Stanza 2: Time slows – the soldier questions his purpose. The pause contrasts with the first stanza’s urgency.
Stanza 3: Machine-like movement – the soldier loses humanity, reduced to a weapon
Language
Violent Imagery
Hughes depicts war as chaotic and physically destructive:
“Bullets smacking the belly out of the air”
→ Onomatopoeic “smacking” makes gunfire visceral; “belly out of the air” suggests the sky itself is wounded.
“Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame”
→ The hare, a natural symbol of innocence, is mutilated by war, “rolled like a flame” evoking napalm-like horror.
Effect: War corrupts nature and flesh alike.
- Mechanistic & Dehumanizing Language
The soldier becomes less human, more machine:
“Sweating like molten iron”
→ Simile compares his tears to hot metal, reducing him to industrial material.
“Cold clockwork of the stars”
→ Alliteration (“cold clockwork”) + celestial imagery = fate controls him like a machine.
“He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm”
→ The rifle is useless, like a broken limb—war renders both man and weapon powerless.
Effect: Soldiers are cogs in war’s indifferent machinery.
- Sensory Overload
Hughes bombards the reader with disjointed sensations:
Touch: “raw-seamed hot khaki” (uniform chafes, amplifying discomfort).
Sound: “yelling alarm” (panic is auditory, not just visual).
Sight/Sound Contrast: “green hedge / that dazzled with rifle fire”
→ Nature (“green hedge”) clashes with war (“rifle fire”), overwhelming the senses.
Effect: The reader experiences the soldier’s disorientation.
- Dismissive Language for Patriotism
Hughes undermines war’s traditional ideals:
“King, honour, human dignity, etcetera”
→ Listing reduces grand concepts to a casual “etcetera”, mocking their irrelevance in battle.
“The patriotic tear… Sweating like molten iron”
→ Contrast between “brimmed” (pride) and “sweating” (fear) shows patriotism melting under terror.
“Bullets smacking the belly out of the air”
Onomatopoeia (“smacking”) + violent imagery. Bullets tear through the sky itself, emphasizing war’s all-consuming destruction.
Violent imagery describes the sound and impact of the shots.
“Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest”
Simile compares sweat (human) to molten metal (industrial), reducing the soldier to a machine. “Centre of his chest” hints at his heart hardening.
“In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations/ Was he the hand pointing that second?”
Alliteration (“cold clockwork”) + celestial imagery. The soldier is powerless, controlled by fate’s unfeeling mechanics.
“King, honour, human dignity, etcetera / Dropped like luxuries”
Listing mocks grand ideals; “etcetera” dismisses them as irrelevant. Simile (“like luxuries”) suggests they’re frivolous in battle.
“The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye”
“Brimmed” implies pride, but later “sweating like molten iron” shows it curdling into fear.
“Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame”
The hare (symbol of innocence) is mutilated. Simile (“like a flame”) links it to artillery fire or napalm, showing war’s reach into nature. Hints the soldiers’ danger.
“His terror’s touchy dynamite”
The soldier seems to have become a metaphor for a weapon rather than a human being. He’s being driven purely by his terror.
Comparisons
Comparison Poem: Exposure (Wilfred Owen)
Similarities:
Both depict war as physically and mentally destructive.
Nature is hostile: In Exposure, “merciless iced winds” kill soldiers; in Bayonet Charge, the “yellow hare” is mutilated by gunfire.
Sensory language: Owen’s “sudden successive flights of bullets” mirrors Hughes’ “bullets smacking the belly out of the air.”
Differences:
Exposure focuses on slow suffering (cold, waiting), while Bayonet Charge is frantic and chaotic (mid-charge).
Owen uses regular stanzas to reflect monotony; Hughes uses irregular structure for chaos.
Comparison Poem: Remains (Simon Armitage)
Similarities:
Both show soldiers losing humanity:
Bayonet Charge: “sweating like molten iron” (machine-like).
Remains: “his bloody life in my bloody hands” (guilt dehumanizes).
Graphic imagery:
Hughes’ “yellow hare” vs. Armitage’s “sort of inside-out” corpse.
Differences:
Remains explores PTSD and guilt after war; Bayonet Charge focuses on the moment of combat.
Armitage uses colloquial language (“probably armed, possibly not”); Hughes uses metallic, industrial metaphors.
Comparison Poem: The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tennyson)
Similarities:
Both depict cavalry charges (Light Brigade = Crimean War; Bayonet Charge = WWI).
Soldiers follow orders blindly.
Differences:
Tone:
Tennyson glorifies sacrifice (“Honour the charge they made!”).
Hughes undermines patriotism (“King, honour… etcetera / Dropped like luxuries”).
Agency:
Light Brigade are heroic (“theirs not to reason why”).
Hughes’ soldier questions (“In what cold clockwork of the stars?”).
Effects and Reality of Conflict:
Hughes exposes war’s dehumanizing reality through a soldier’s visceral experience. The abrupt opening—”Suddenly he awoke and was running”—plunges us into disorienting combat. Striking imagery like “raw-seamed hot khaki” shows his physical/psychological unraveling, while the “yellow hare…threshing circle” mirrors his panicked instinct to survive. The poem’s fractured structure (caesurae, erratic lines) mirrors his mental fragmentation. Ultimately, noble ideals (“King, honour”) become meaningless luxuries as war reduces him to “cold clockwork”—a machine of survival.
Theme of Fear
Hughes presents fear as an all-consuming force that strips away reason and humanity, reducing the soldier to pure instinct. The poem’s opening—”Suddenly he awoke and was running”—establishes fear’s immediate, overwhelming power, with the adverb “suddenly” suggesting complete disorientation. The metaphor “terror’s touchy dynamite” brilliantly captures fear’s volatile nature, showing how it becomes an explosive, uncontrollable force within the soldier. Physical manifestations of fear appear in the “raw-seamed hot khaki” - the adjective “raw” conveying both the roughness of his uniform and his own exposed, vulnerable state. The extended image of the “yellow hare…crawled in a threshing circle” mirrors the soldier’s own panicked movements, while the verb “threshing” suggests violent, uncontrolled thrashing. Hughes’ use of enjambment and erratic line lengths structurally replicates the soldier’s fragmented mental state under fear’s grip.
Theme of Individual Experiences
Hughes immerses the reader in one soldier’s visceral, fragmented experience of combat, stripping war down to its most personal and primal level. The poem’s second-person perspective (“he” functioning like “you”) creates intense immediacy, making the soldier’s terror and disorientation profoundly personal. Striking physiological details—”raw in raw-seamed hot khaki”—convey both the physical discomfort and psychological exposure of the individual soldier, with the repetition of “raw” emphasizing his vulnerable, animalistic state. The extended metaphor of the “yellow hare…threshing in circles” mirrors the soldier’s own panicked movements, reducing this human combatant to pure instinct. Hughes’ disjointed structure, with its erratic line lengths and abrupt caesurae, formally replicates the soldier’s shattered thought processes under fire. The climactic moment where “King, honour, human dignity/Dropped like luxuries” reveals how individual identity collapses under extreme duress, leaving only the bare machinery of survival (“cold clockwork”).
Compare the ways poets present the consequences of conflict and war in ‘Bayonet
Charge’ and in one other poem from ‘Power and Conflict’.
The Devastating Consequences of War in ‘Bayonet Charge’ and ‘Remains’
Both poems expose war’s destructive impact, but Hughes focuses on combat’s immediate dehumanization while Armitage explores its lingering psychological scars. Their contrasting approaches reveal war’s full brutality - both in the moment and long after.
- The Destruction of Human Identity
Hughes strips the soldier of his humanity through visceral animal imagery: the “yellow hare… in a threshing circle” becomes a metaphor for the soldier’s reduction to pure instinct. The hare’s “threshing” (a farming term ironically applied to battle) mirrors his panicked movements, while the “statuary” simile (“his foot hung like statuary”) shows his paradoxical paralysis amidst chaos. Similarly, Armitage’s soldier loses his moral identity through the euphemistic “probably armed, possibly not” - the hesitant repetition exposing his crumbling certainty. Both poems use physical metaphors (Hughes’ hare, Armitage’s *“blood-shadow”**) to symbolize war’s erosion of humanity. - Structural Mirroring of Trauma
Hughes’ erratic free verse, with its abrupt caesurae (“Then the shot-slashed furrows”), replicates the soldier’s disjointed consciousness under fire. The lack of stanzas creates relentless momentum, mirroring his trapped experience. Conversely, Armitage uses controlled quatrains that gradually fracture - the final stanza’s enjambment (“then I’m home on leave. But I blink”) visually represents PTSD’s intrusive memories. Both structures serve as formal metaphors: Hughes’ for combat chaos, Armitage’s for psychological fragmentation. - The Betrayal of Military Ideals
The climactic “King, honour, human dignity/Dropped like luxuries” (Hughes) employs listing and simile to show war’s hollow promises. The enjambment emphasizes their abrupt abandonment mid-charge. Armitage parallels this through bitter irony - the soldier follows orders yet is punished with guilt (“his bloody life in my bloody hands”). The plosive repetition of “bloody” underscores his anger at this betrayal. Both poems reveal how institutions exploit soldiers, though Hughes focuses on battle’s heat while Armitage exposes bureaucracy’s cold aftermath.
