form and structure

• Hughes employs a chaotic structure in his poem to mirror the chaos and panic of war. 
• Enjambment 

  Enjambment stops the reader from taking a break or pause which quickens the pace of the poem. The whole of the first stanza is a single sentence. This matches the tense action of the poem and maintains the momentum of a bayonet charge and helps the readers to empathise with the panic and fear felt by the soldier. The enjambment helps to emphasise the importance of the rhetorical question it ends on – “was he the hand pointing that second?” . Here, the reader is forced to question whether the soldier is at war by his own choice or is a mechanical cog in a constantly ticking clock. 
• Caesura 

  The fast pace created by the enjambment in the first stanza starkly contrasts with the second stanza. The pace of the second stanza is much slower as it’s broken up with lots of caesura. Here the soldier stops to consider the philosophical meaning of war.
• The pace of the poem is paused, implying that time has stopped or the soldier is so overwhelmed that they are forced to pause and consider. This has the alternative effect of causing the listener to pause and consider the reality of war. Hughes’ frequent use of enjambment and caesura makes the poem feel disjointed and confusing. The structure is consistent with his message that war cannot be understood fully (it is confusing to the reader – also to the soldier). 
• Repetition 

  Hughes repeats “raw” which stands out against the strength of his other vocabulary conveying the soldier’s intense suffering. Repetition is also reminiscent of stuttering as if the soldier is experiencing a breakdown in rationality as a result of their anxiety and stress. Struggle through poem 
• The combined effect of free verse, enjambment, caesura and the rich but complex imagery Hughes uses is that it makes the poem difficult to read. The meaning and narrative is hidden under a plethora of literary techniques and structural devices that fragment the poem and confuse the listener. The listeners struggle to understand is representative of the struggle experienced by the soldier
• starts in medias res - in the middle of the story, with no time to establish the characters and the setting