bayonet charge

• Hughes was a child during WW2 and he never fought or saw war firsthand either but instead he grew up post-war era and witnessed the influence in his home in Yorkshire
• Hughes studied mythology which is shown in the image of the yellow hare as well as anthropology which is shown through the poem's fixation on instinctual behaviour
• 'suddenly' - this thrust the listener into the action and relates to the idea of waking up
• 'raw // in raw' - the use of repetition creates a sense of desperation and the connotations of 'raw' are animalistic which denotes a lack of humanity in the situation
• 'his sweat heavy' - this metaphor shows the physical impact of the soldier's fear
• ' a field of clods' - a clod is a mound of earth
• 'bullets smacking the belly' - this metaphor creates a tense, violent atmosphere and also alludes to someone being winded and unable to breathe
• 'patriotic fear' - fear appears to have taken over the soldiers patriotism
• 'in bewilderment then he almost stopped-' - the use of the hyphen creates a pause which coincides with the idea of the soldier being about to stop
• ' cold clockwork' - mechanical imagery is emphasised by the harsh alliteration and implies that the soldier has been dehumanised in his role
• 'listening between his footfalls for the reason // of his still running' - the soldier begins to further question the reason for him fighting
• ' shot-slashed furrows' - rural imagery is subverted to create a juxtaposition between the nourishing connotations of farming and the life being taken away in the same place
• ' threw up a yellow hare' - the violent connotations of 'threw up' contrast with the innocence connotated by a hare
• 'its mouth wide // open silent' - it appears that the hare is screaming
• 'king, honour, human dignity, etcetera // dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm' - the soldier appears to have completely abandoned his previously upheld values and motivation to fight
• the poem is written in the third person singular which gives a limited narrative perspective which allows the reader to focus on the individual impact of war by showing the way war impacts a single individual
• as its written from a soldier's perspective, the reality of war experience is horrific to the reader who finds it impossible to view war favourably even though the war may be beneficial nationally and further serving in a war as honourable, the poem shows that this does not excuse the suffering it inflicts on individual soldiers
• this third person singular perspective also emphasises the isolation felt by soldiers in war, and the protagonist is the only human in the poem, he is isolated from any sources of help or comfort, further this isolation helps to intensify the suffering of the speaker and focuses the audience on the impact that war has on them
• moreover, soldiers are still neglected by the nation they fought for and are left to go back to society
• the poem highly focused on one solider's emotions which is ironic as soldiers were expected to show no emotion and also shows how the solider referenced cannot share his feelings with his peers, further Hughes depicts a soldier desensitised to the harshness of war, he appears immune to the death of other soldiers and it takes the suffering of nature to break his trance-like state
• Hughes employs a chaotic structure in his poem to mirror the violence and panic of war
• enjambement stops the reader from taking a single break or pause which quickens the pace of the poem and the whole of the first stanza is a single sentence and 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?', the reader is forced to question whether the soldier is at war by his choice or is a mechanical cog in a constantly ticking clock
• the fast pace created by the enjambment in the first stanza starkly contrasts with the second stanza and the pace of the second stanza is much slower as it's broken up with lots of caesura, as the soldier stops to consider the philosophical meaning of war implying that time has stopped or the soldiers is over overwhelmed that they are forced to pause and consider
• Hughes' frequent use of enjambment can caesura makes the poem feel disjointed and confusing and the structure is consistent with his message that war cannot be understood fully
• Hughes repeats 'raw' which stands out against the strength of his other vocabulary conveying the soldier's intense suffering, further the repetition is also reminiscent of stuttering as if the soldier is experiencing a breakdown in rationality as a result of their anxiety, stress or even fear
• 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, further the meaning and narrative is hidden under a plethora of literacy techniques and structural devices that fragment the poem and confuse the listener
• the poem opens with ' suddenly he awoke' which instantly lunges the reader into the action without any introduction and by opening in media res (the midst of the plot) there is no warning of the fighting to come and the reader has no chance to prepare for it, this mirrors the shock soldiers would have felt going into battle
• by starting at an unconventional place in the narrative, the reader is left feeling confused and a tense atmosphere is established this reflects the confusion and panic soldiers would have left in war allows the reader to relate and empathise with them
• Hughes infuses the physical actions of the soldier with metaphorical meaning, during war, sleep is a time of safety and protection and the act of waking up involves waking up to danger and realising one's own mortality, as the soldier may have literally 'awoke(n)' in response to a threat but there's also a figurative side to him waking up - gained awareness of the reality of war
• ' patriotic tear(s)' that places soldiers under an illusion of the honour and pride in fighting, it is only when they arrive on the frontline that the effects of propaganda wear off and the true horror of war is realised
• the hare is used as a symbol of soldier's collective suffering and Hughes projects the violence of war onto an innocent creature accidentally caught up in the war
• the explicit violence and graphic descriptions of war missing in the rest of the poem are provided through the hare's 'threshing circle' and its ' moth wide, open silent', which convey Hughes is trying to show that the soldier is so immune to the death of humans, that it takes a new kind of suffering - that of an innocent animal
• the personification of the hare through Hughes' description of its eyes and screaming mouth, helps the reader to associate the hare's suffering with that of the human soldiers and this reminds them of the danger the speaker is in