Bayonet charge Flashcards
Perspective
• Third person singular, gives a limited narrative oerseoctive. Allows the reader to focus on the individual impact of war by showing the way war impacts a single individual. Even if serving in a war is seen as honourable, the poem shows that this does not excuse the suffering it inflicts on individual soliders.
• This third person singular perspective also emphasises the isolation felt by soldiers in war. As the protagonist is the only human in the poem, he is isolated from any source of help or comfort. The isolation helps to intensify the suffering of the speaker and focuses the audience on the impact that the war has on them.
Structure
• Enjambment, stops the reader from taking a break or pause which quickens the pace of the poem. Whole of first stanza is a single sentence. Matches the temse action of the poem and maintains the momentum of a bayonet chatge and helps the readers to empathise with panic and fear felt by the soldier.
• Caesura. The fast pace created by the enjambment in the first stanza starkly contrasts with the second stanza. Pace of second stanza is much slower as its 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. Has the alternative affect 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 consitent with his message that war cannot be understood fully.
• Repition of “raw” stands out against the strength of his other vocabulary conveying the soldier’s intense suffering. Repition is also reminiscent of stuttering as if the soldier is experiencing a breakdown in rationality as a result of their anxiety and stress.
• Opens in Medias Res, instantly lunges the reader into action. There is no warning of the fighting to come and the reader has no chance to prepare for it. Mirrors the shock soldiers would have felt going into battle. Reader is left feeling confused and a tense atmosphere is established, reflects the confusion and panic soldiers would have felt in war which allows the reader to relate to their experiences, and therefore empathise with them.
Language
• Use of metaphors. During war, sleep is a time or safety and protection. The act of waking up involved waking up to danger and realising one’s own mortality. The solider may have literally “awoke[n]” in response to a threat but there’s also a figurative side to him waking up in. Here, the soldier could have gained awareness of the reality of war.
• Lexis. Combines lexis from the semantic field of body parts and violence with metaphors which dehumanise the soldier to blur the lines between what is human and what is a weapon, e.g. “lugged” implies that he is not physically adpet enough to carry, physically unprepared for the hardship and strain of war.
• Similes. “He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm”. This implies that the soldier seems disconnected from his weapon and uncomfortable holding it, showing his physical unsuitability for his role.
• Asyndetic listing. “King, honour, human dignity”, shows how the soldier gains honour from fighting for his king and country.
• Harsh alliterative consonants in “cold clockwork” reinforce the cold, calculated mechanical nature of war. Poem implies that the soldiers are treated as pawns in a game rather than individual lives.
• Natural imagery. Hare is used a symbol of soldier’s collective suffering. “threshing circle” and its “mouth wide, open silent?” Hughes is trying to show that the soldier is so immune to death of humans, that it takes a new kind of suffering- that of an innocent animal- for him to be shocked out of his trance and into instinctive action as “he plunged past” away from danger. Hare’s suffering is the only explicit sign of violence, and the infliction if pain on an innocent animal highlights the injustice of war, organisms completely unconnected are being harmed.
• Personification used to suggest that nature if a victim of war. “bullets smacking the belly out of the air”. Active verb “smacking” serves to demonstrate the violence inflicted on the air, further emohasises by the use if harsh plosive sounds in “bullets” and “belly”.
Similarities between Bayonet Charge and COTLB
• Both poems critice the leaders of war, this is explicit in Bayonet charge but more subtle in COTLB. There is the implication in both poems that propaganda is a powerful tool in the public attutude to war.
Differences between Bayonet Charge and COTLB
• COTLB praises the blund obedience of soldiers in the rehtoricsl question “When can their glory fade?”. In Bayonet Charge the perception of honour is challenged in “In bewilderment then he almost stopped.”
• Tennyson presents the soldier’s bravery in the repition in “Honour the Charge they made!” “Honour the light brigade”. Opposingly, Hughes encourages the questioning of war in “King, honour, human dignity, etcetera//Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm”
• More critical tine of Bayonet charge is reflective of Hughes being relatively unknown when ghis was published whilst Tennyson was poet laureate, allowing Hughes more freedom.
• Tennyson uses dactylic dimeter, to create a quick pace to glorify the action whereas Hughes presents war as a source of fear and panic.
Similarities between Bayonet Charge and Exposure
• Sense of duty imposed by patriotism diguises the true nature of war in both poems to give the soldiers motivation for fighting
• Both poems present unprepared soldiers
• In Bayonet Charge, Hughes implies that the soldier is motivated for fighting by his sense of patriotism through the metaphor. “The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye.” In Exposure, the narrator questions their beliefs in “What are we doing here?”.
Differences between Bayonet Charge and Exposure
• Owen actually experienced war whereas Hughes did not, which gives Owen a more valid perspective
Similarities between Bayonet Charge and Remains
• Both poets present the psychological impact of war upon a soldier. In Bayonet Charge, this js done through the anthropomorphism of a hare as screaming in “its mouth wide // Open silent”. Armitage creates the same effect in Remains by depicting the long term impact of war “His blood-shadow stays on the street”.
• The soldiers are presented to be scared in both poems which acts as a criticism of war and the killing it it inflicts. Hughe’s narrator’s fear is shown through the description of “his sweat heavy” and Armitage creates the same effect through his description “I blink // and he bursts again through the doors”.
• They are both written by poets with no first hand experience of conflict.
Differences between Bayonet Charge and Remains
• Remains shows the impact after war once the soldier is “home on leave. Bayonet charge is the effect whilst the soldier is still “stumbling across a field”.
