Bayonet charge

• Bayonet charge- Ted Hughes biography

  • 1930-1998 ,Poet Laureate 1984-1998
  • Grew up in the countryside of Yorkshire
  • Passionate about animals and nature. Obsessed with astrology
  • Devoted to poetry from a young age. His priority was writing
  • Came from a relatively poor family so that means he was going to financially struggle for the rest of his life
  • Father served in WWI
• What was Ted Hughes' motivation for writing a WWI poem?

  • Father (William Hughes) served in WWI.
  • His father was one of the only 17 soldiers in Lancashire who survived death at Gallipoli
  • Through other Hughes' poems were presented a picture of his father as somebody who spent the rest of his life emotionally paralysed, battered and traumatised from his experiences in WWI Hughss wrote about WWI because although he didn't personally experience it, he felt the effects of war in his everyday life through his relation with his father.
• Bayonet Charge structure analysis 


  The use of enjambment creates a disjointed, unordered effect on the reader. Just like the soldier is confused, the reader struggled to make sense of the chaos and disorder of the structure of the poem.

  The use of caesura forces the reader, like the soldier to stop and think
• Bayonet Charge quotes and analysis 


  'Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge'

  The use of the preposition 'towards'conveys the idea that the soldiers sense of direction is vague and unspecific, emphasising the soldiers confusion and disproportionate state of mind.

  Hughes had repeated this in the last stanza but now the soldier 'Plunge[s]....towards the green hedge'. Here the soldier isn't 'stumbling' anymore inferring he's significantly more aware of his surroundings and more in control of his actions.
• Bayonet Charge quotes and analysis 


  'Field of clods'

  Clods means lumps of earth. This could be ambiguous and mean literal dirt or Ted is using a euphemism to describe dead bodies. This shows the upper authorities disregard to these deaths and present us with the idea that the upper authorities are treating the soldiers like dirt.

  'He'

  The impersonal use of the personal pronoun 'he' throughout the poem shows that during war, soldiers are no longer people with names and lives, they are just killing machines. They are nothing more than one of many soldiers
• Bayonet Charge structure and analysis 


  Ted Hughes uses detailed structural choices along with difficult language choices deliberately. The difficulty in getting to the end of the poem reflects the difficulty the soldier faces. Just as the soldier striggles laboriously though the mud, we, as a reader trudge heavily through the structural and linguistic sludge of the poem, helping us to emphasise the situation the soldiers are in.
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'Bullets smacking the belly out of the air' - Personification

  • The Bullets are personified to do the smacking. 'Smacking' is a sharp onomatopoeic sound, suggesting-ironically- a child's punishment showing the upper authorities treat the soldiers as children.
  • Hughes inverts what the reader might expect so that the 'belly' is pushed 'out of the air'. This suggests fear and that it upturns everything as if the world is inverted. Inanimate things ('Bullets') become animate, the normal order is destroyed
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'Bullets smacking the belly out of the air'

  • Because we are seeing, as readers, the air with a 'belly', which is a human characteristic, Owen is presenting nature as human like. The fact that the bullet has 'smacked the air' out of it furthermore shows than nature is being defeated (comparison to Ozymandias or exposure which present nature as more powerful than man
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'Patriotic tear...molten iron from the centre of his chest'

  • The soldiers patriotism was originally in the form of a tear which has connotations of emotion. This suggests he was passionate about war; it bring the right thing to do- probably due to propaganda. Equally, when it leaves its coming from 'the centre of his chest'; it was held in his heart. The idea of war as the right thing was deep rooted in him. Yet, when at war, he realised the true horror and his patriotism is spurged from his body as he becomes disillusioned with war
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'Patriotic tear...molten iron from the centre of his chest'

  Tear leaves his body like 'molten iron' suggesting that its a painful process as he's realising hes wrong in his view of war. The iron could be weighing him down making it harder to fight-just as its harder to fight when you no longer believe I the cause you are fighting for and have lost the patriotism that motivated you.
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis 


  'Stumbling across a field...towards a green hedge' - first stanza

  'Plunged....towards the green hedge' - last stanza

  At first, the hedge is not distinct and clear to the soldier. Hughes shows this by using the indefinite "a". This changes In the last stanza with the replacement of the definite "the". By confirming the soldiers focused, Hughes heightens the importance of the next line ("King, honour, human dignity, etcetera").
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  "King, honour, human dignity, etcetera" The use of etcetera after naming these important values shows how the soldier has completely stopped believing in these values and is instead being driven by adrenalin and fear. The values the soldier used to have of his country are now useless to him for they won't help him survive the realities of war.
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'King, honour, human dignity, etcetera Perhaps he feels betrayed because what his 'king' told him about 'honour' and 'human dignity' was them trapping him into the fantasy of war but he still "plunge[s]", following their orders "to get out of that blue crackling air". This shows the soldier feels trapped. The "blue crackling air" is metaphor for all the unfulfilled promises and expectations he was told.

  'Cold clockwork' demonstrates the mechanism of the soldiers. Once they have been wound up like a clockwork by the upper authorities they can't stop.
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'Threw up like a yellow hare that rolled like a flame'

  'Yellow' connotates cowardness. This could be Hughes alluding to the story of the "tortoise and the hare" in which the hare lost because his arrogance got in the way. This draws on the reality of the Patriotic soldiers who'd race towards their enemy snd consequently beimg killed- their bodies being tangled in barbed wire.
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  "Yellow hare"

  This could be ambiguous for a ball of fire, but in a daze, the soldier sees it as a 'Yellow hare'. This ultimately shows how the soldier is no longer sane and his brain can no longer bare with seeing any more destruction.
• Bayonet charge quotes and analysis

  'Threw up a Yellow hare'

  • Connotates spring. Yearning for happiness and sunshine
  • The hare being killed is Ted Hughes mourning the damage that war causes upon innocent nature. To add on the representation of sickness links to how war kills Innocence, including nature. Those who kill things that are innocent are sick in their mind-making them commit horrible indescribable acts as they think it's fine.