Bayonet charge

• Who was bayonet charge written by?

  Ted Hughes.
• • Through the depiction of a moment in a soldiers psyche, Hughes highlights the terror and senselessness of war
• • Hughes measures the visceral experience of actual conflict against romanticised notions that made young men want to become a soldier.
• • Hughes uses the soldiers epiphany:

  - about both the absurdity of war and the hollowness of patriotism - to critique the political powers responsible for warfare.
• "suddenly he awake and was running"
• "Bullets smack the belly out of the air"
• "In what cold clockworks of the stars and nations, was he the hand pointing that second?"
• "king, honour, human dignity, etcetera

  Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm"
• "suddenly he awoke and was running"

  • Poem opens in medias res (middle of action)
  • "Awoke" - literal: sleeping during a lull in battle
  • metaphorical: "suddenly" acutely aware of horrors and chaos of war
  • Exiting the dream of patriotism and entering the reality of war
  • Heading away from previous illusory vision of war towards true terror.
• "bullets snake the belly of of the air"

  • Intentionally strange metaphor as if he doesn't have time to perceive his surroundings - air doesn't have a belly.
  • Points to visceral + intense force of bullets, and his luck at avoiding them
  • Reveals the true terror of armed conflict.
• "in what cold clock work of the stars and nations Was he the hand pointing that second?"

  • "Cold" suggests the inhumanity of warfare.
  • "Stars" inevitability and fate of soldiers deaths.
  • "Nations" political power holds responsibility for war
  • Rhetorical question: epiphany/ realisation that his patriotism has made him a tool for war and his country doesn't want to protect him
  • "Hand" metaphorical cog - ticking as the vast machinery of war instructs him= only understands in force of brutality of war.
  • Agency?: who controls soldiers running? What is his motivation
• "king, honour, human dignity, etcetera

  Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm"

  • "Etcetera" - flippant
  • List: hollow and empty concepts distant from soldiers actual war time experience
  • "Yelling alarm" - rings out like a signal for soldiers to escape (but he can't)
  • Simile: these are frivolous items he can't afford carrying around in battle field chaos- indulgences in the first place?