Overview
These notes analyze Ted Hughes's "Bayonet Charge," a World War I poem exploring the indescribable horror of war through complex structure and imagery. Hughes wrote from secondhand experience, heavily influenced by his father's WWI trauma and Wilfred Owen's poetry.
Biographical Context
- Born 1930, died 1998; wrote about WWI despite not experiencing it personally.
- Grew up in Yorkshire countryside; became famous for animal and nature poetry.
- Came from relatively poor family but devoted to writing from young age.
- Wrote poetry, plays, children's books including The Iron Man.
- Father William Hughes served in WWI; one of seventeen survivors at Gallipoli.
- Father remained emotionally paralyzed and traumatized throughout life.
- Hughes wore WWI greatcoat as young adult, obsessed with the war.
- West Yorkshire lost massive population to war; region "in mourning" during Hughes's childhood.
- Deeply admired Wilfred Owen's WWI poetry; saw it as representing his father's experience.
- Appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 until death in 1998.
Publication History
- "Bayonet Charge" is one of six poems in Hughes's first collection, The Hawk in the Rain.
- Sylvia Plath typed and entered poems into competition without Hughes's knowledge.
- Hughes won, resulting in UK and US publication.
- Hughes later felt embarrassed about early poems, wished to revise them.
Poem Structure Overview
| Verse | Content | Focus |
|---|
| 1 | Soldier wakes, charges toward enemy with bayonet | Confusion, physical action |
| 2 | Soldier stops to contemplate purpose and meaning | Questioning, reflection |
| 3 | Focus shifts to yellow hare caught in battle | Nature as victim |
- Poem deliberately throws reader into middle of action with opening word "suddenly."
- Structure broken into three distinct verses with different focuses.
Major Theme
- Primary theme: the indescribable horror of war.
- Goes beyond "war is bad" to show war cannot be adequately described in any communication form.
- Hughes emphasizes reality of war differs completely from our imagined ideas.
- Poem's complexity is fundamental to expressing this theme.
Structural Devices
Enjambment (sentences spanning multiple lines)
- Used throughout poem; some sentences cross between verses.
- Creates disjointed, unordered effect mirroring soldier's chaotic experience.
- Reader struggles to make sense, paralleling soldier's confusion.
Caesura (sentences ending mid-line)
- Two examples, both in verse 2 where soldier stops to reflect.
- Forces reader to pause like the soldier, creating thinking moments.
- Combines with enjambment to produce chaotic, hard-to-follow structure.
Overall Difficulty
- Poem deliberately made hard to read and understand.
- Structural and linguistic complexity forces reader to "trudge through sludge."
- Difficulty reflects soldier's laborious struggle through battlefield.
Repetition and Allusion
"Raw" Repetition in Opening Lines
- "Raw in raw-seamed hot khaki" appears clumsy but deliberate.
- Simple interpretation: reflects soldier's shock, stuttering struggle to articulate moment.
- Advanced interpretation: allusion to Wilfred Owen's "Spring Offensive."
Connection to Owen's "Spring Offensive"
- Owen's poem also about bayonet charge, only one he wrote on topic.
- Owen uses similar repetition: "lying easy, were at ease."
- Multiple shared vocabulary: temperature words (hot, cold, flame), "crawling/crawled," "plunged past."
- Hughes must "sound like Owen" because bayonet charge knowledge comes from Owen.
- Poem is "secondhand poem about secondhand experience."
- Even gifted Hughes must borrow from someone who experienced war firsthand.
Simile Usage
- Six similes throughout poem, almost one per sentence.
- Overwhelming use indicates poet cannot directly describe events.
- Simile compares one thing to another when direct description impossible.
- Amount of similes demonstrates war's horror exceeds descriptive language.
- Hughes must say what war is "like" because he cannot say what it "is."
Imagery and Language
Nature as Victim
- "Bullets smacking the belly out of the air" personifies air with belly.
- Air symbolizes nature, equally victimized by war.
- Yellow hare in final verse represents nature caught in war.
- Links to Hughes's biographical love of animals and outdoors.
- No clear explanation for "yellow" hare (possibly cowardice, possibly dream symbolism).
Clockwork and Indifference
- "Cold clockwork of the stars and the nations" suggests soldier is cog in machine.
- References Hughes's passion for astrology; questions if war was destined.
- Neither stars nor nations care about individual soldier.
Brutal Language in Verse 1
- Negative vocabulary overload: hot, raw, stumbling, lugged, numbed, smashed.
- "Brutal masculine fistfuls of words" (from Hughes's obituary).
- Overwhelms reader to mirror soldier's feelings.
Complex Circular Simile
- "Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs / Listening between his footfalls for the reason"
- Essentially describes running like someone who would run in this situation.
- Pointless content but complex structure forces reader to struggle.
- Complexity makes reader experience confusion similar to soldier's.
Patriotism and War Critique
Loss of Patriotic Ideals
- "Patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye / Sweating like molten iron from the center of his chest"
- Original patriotism replaced by sheer panic.
Questioning Authority
- Contrasts with Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" where soldiers don't question.
- This soldier stops in verse 2 to question what he's doing and why.
- Shows different attitudes toward war and duty.
"Etcetera" Line
- Soldier plunges past "King, honour, human dignity, etcetera."
- "Etcetera" is mocking tone, criticizes hollow patriotic values.
- Suggests noble virtues mean nothing in heat of battle.
- Reads as "blahdy blahdy blah," harsh critique of war justifications.
Final Line
- "His terror's touchy dynamite" uses alliterative metaphor.
- Despite objections, soldier becomes killing machine.
- Represents danger he can inflict on others.
- Soldier referred to as "he" throughout, indicating universal experience, not one specific soldier.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Enjambment: structural device where sentences continue across multiple lines without stopping at line breaks.
- Caesura: punctuation mark (period/question mark) ending sentence in middle of line.
- Simile: comparison using "like" or "as" to make something understandable by likening it to something else.
- Allusion: reference to another work, particularly Owen's "Spring Offensive."