Bayonet Charge

Question 1

What is Bayonet Charge about?

Answer 1

• Hughes presents a distressed soldier charging into battle, showing us his thoughts & feelings as he moves
• Hughes explores the priorities of a soldier in the heat of the moment in war whilst also looking at the reasons people normally go to war
• He incriminates the abuse of the soldiers & the lies they are told in order to wrongfully convince them to make the ultimate sacrifice

Question 2

What is the contextual significance of Hughes’ family?

Answer 2

• Ted Hughes was not alive during WW1
• However, his father fought in Gallipoli, a fact which may define his thoughts & feelings about war

Question 3

What is the contextual significance of Hughes’ poems?

Answer 3

• Bayonet Charge was from a collection of poems called “The Hawk in the Rain”, dedicated to his wife Sylvia Plath
• The anthology focuses mainly on animals & their behaviours
• This focus on animalistic is seen with the poems focus on instinctual behaviours

Question 4

What quote reflects the reality of war?

Answer 4

“cold clockwork”

Question 5

How does “cold clockwork” reflect reality of war?

Answer 5

• Hughes uses harsh alliterative consonants in “cold clockwork” to re-emphasise the mechanical & emotionless nature of war
• “Clockwork” also emphasises how war will keep going on regardless of what happens around, completely blind to the suffering of the humans that fight in it

Question 6

What quote reflects nature?

Answer 6

• describes a hare as being in a “threshing circle”
• the hare’s mouth as “wide open, silent”

Question 7

How is “threshing circle” & “wide open, silent” used to describe nature?

Answer 7

• Hughes uses the hare as symbolic of the suffering of the soldiers
• Hughes uses the hare to show how the ruthlessness of war affects all indiscriminately, and that therefore there are no winners in war
• Hughes uses explicit violence & graphic imagery in order to fully communicate the suffering of the hare, saying it was in a “threshing circle” & it’s mouth “wide open, silent”
• The agricultural imagery of “threshing circle” may be alluding to how the soldiers are almost harvested, in that they are indiscriminately cut down & killed whereas the “silence” of the hare may be referring to how the soldiers are unable to speak on their plight
• The general portrayal of the hare as suffering so dramatically may be Hughes trying to show how war has created the soldier so desensitised to human suffering that it took the suffering of an innocent animal to break him out of his trance

Question 8

What quote reflects the dehumanisation of soldiers?

Answer 8

“suddenly he awoke and was running”

Question 9

How does “suddenly he awoke and was running” reflect the dehumanisation of soldiers?

Answer 9

• Hughes amplifies on the dehumanisation of the soldiers by showing the panic & terror going through a soldier’s mind
• The poem begins in media res with “suddenly he awoke and was running to show how the soldier is thrust into the heat of the battle, with the suddenness of the beginning of the poem reflecting how the soldier feels he is thrown into a life-threatening situation
• Overall throughout Bayonet Charge the soldier is shown as a machine, full of fear and panic and shown overall to be an aversed participant in the war machine

Question 10

What are the two pieces of form in the poem?

Answer 10

• Perspective
• Lack of rhyme scheme

Question 11

Why does Hughes emphasise perspective?

Answer 11

• Poem in third person singular, allowing the poet to focus on showing the reader how war impacts one person through the perspective of that person
• By presenting war through the lens of a soldier, Hughes makes it impossible to view war approvingly, rather the soldier’s stark terror is rubbed off on the reader
• The singular perspective also focuses on the isolation felt by soldiers, thrown into a life or death situation with no means of hope or comfort. Hughes presents it as ironic that in an army of thousands each and every one feels so lonely
• Hughes writes in a third person singular form perhaps as he has no first hand experience of war

Question 12

Why does Hughes use a lack of rhyme scheme?

Answer 12

• There is a clear lack of rhyme scheme within the poem, with lines never bearing any form of audible similarity to the ending of the line before them
• This may be Hughes intentionally attempting to communicate to the reader the absolute lack of regularity and order within the soldier’s experiences of war, with every new moment bringing another challenge & another surprise
• The lack of rhyme also creates an atmosphere of discomfort and nerviness for the audience who are never able to settle into a rhythm & regularity, rather they are forced to listen to the soldier’s pain with every line being something new

Question 13

What is the structural significance of enjambment?

Answer 13

• The entirety of the first stanza is one sentence. This maintains the tempo of a bayonet charge, allowing the reader to fully feel the panic & terror of the soldier
• By his generous use of enjambment Hughes stops the reader from pausing to take a break. This creates an atmosphere of breathlessness & chaos, once more not allowing the reader to get comfortable or settle into a rhythm whilst reading the poem. This once better allows the reader to empathise with the soldier
• The enjambment also means that many lines flow into the next unhindered, perhaps trying to mirror how the terrifying moments of war blend into one stream for the soldier