Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes
Part of the AQA Poetry Anthology, Power and Conflict
Analyse the poem “Bayonet Charge” by Ted Hughes to understand the use of form, structure and poetic devices and how these relate to the underlying themes within the poem.
We’ve captured all of the points below in our PDF guide which you can download below.
Where to start
Analysing poetry can be a little daunting at first, and you may need to read it a few times before you understand what the poet is trying to say. Don’t worry though, you will soon get used to it and start to understand how to approach analysing a poem.
It’s important that you use the version of the poem from your anthology when doing your analysis. The layout of some poems can differ from publication to publication (particularly over the internet) – perhaps some words will have been changed or the stanzas may be set out differently. This can affect the analysis. So, always work from the version set out in your anthology as this is how the poem will be laid out in your exam.
When analysing the poem try to do a little research on the poet themselves. It is not strictly necessary but understanding a little about them and their background can provide some helpful context to the poem which can be useful in your analysis.
Download a clean version of the poem, Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes using the button opposite. Use this to annotate your notes from the analysis below.
About the poet - Ted Hughes
- Ted Hughes was born in 1930 and he grew up in rural Yorkshire and started writing poetry at a young age.
- He served for a short time in the RAF, and then attended Cambridge University.
- Growing up in rural Yorkshire had a profound impact on his life, with much of his poetry being dominated by nature.
- Hughes was big fan of Wilfred Owen, the contemporary style that he used influenced much of Hughes’ work.
Background to the poem
Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay
- Hughes’ father served in WW1 where he was one of only a few soldiers in his regiment to survive a battle at Gallipoli.
- His father returned home from battle traumatised and this had a significant impact on Hughes’ childhood.
- The tales of the fighting told by his father had a formative impact on Hughes who grew up during a time when the country was struggling to recover from the war.
What is the poem about?
- Bayonet Charge is one of the most complex poems to understand in the Power and Conflict anthology.
- The first thing to understand is that this was Hughes intention: he wanted the reader to feel disorientated and confused from the outset – just like soldiers at war.
- The poem tells of a soldier who is in the midst of a battle.
- From the very first stanza the reader is thrown into the thick of the action with a soldier charging into battle with his bayonet in hand. He is confused, as are we.
- The second stanza brings a moment of peace with the soldier stopping for a moment to consider what he’s doing; he tries to make sense of what is happening.
- In the final stanza the soldier focusses on a hare which is shot and lays dying. This shocks the soldier back into the action when he realises he is in danger.
So now we know that the poem is about let’s analyse how Hughes uses poetic devices to tell his story.
Form and Structure
- The poem is written in ‘third person singular’. This means it is written about someone – referring to ‘he’ rather than being autobiographical which would refer to ‘I’. This makes sense as we know it was Hughes’ father that served in the war and not Hughes himself.
- The fact that the poem focusses on just one soldier provides a very personal and individual insight to the reader. It gives the reader a sense of loneliness and isolation – even though there are clearly other soldiers around him we only hear about this one soldier. This gives a unique insight into the way many soldiers felt about their time at war.
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
- The poem has no definable structure; it is very chaotic with no real pattern. Again, this is intentional with Hughes using the structure of the poem to support the feeling of chaos the reader feels.
- The first stanza is one long sentence. There are no breaks or pauses. Instead Hughes forces the reader on through the action making them feel overwhelmed. This use of enjambment (where sentences run across lines) is vey clever on Hughes part.
- In contrast, the second stanza is full of punctuation. Hughes uses caesura (using punctuation mid-line) to force the reader to stop and take a breath, just as the soldier does
Use of language
Hughes uses many similes in the poem, ‘numb as a smashed arm’, ‘sweating like molten iron’, ‘Like a man who has jumped up in the dark’. This is partly because Hughes never experienced war himself so has to liken it to something he has experienced. But also, gives a feeling that the reality of war is so horrific that it cannot be described in itself, it has to be likened to other things.
Personification is used in a very unique way. ‘Bullets smacking the air’ ‘Statuary’, ‘Blending of body and weapon’. This makes humans and weapons feel like one and the same, i.e., humans become weapons, it is almost de-humanising. It also shows natures suffers as a result of war.
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
- The word ‘raw’ is repeated in the first two lines which gives a sort of stuttering effect. As though the poet is struggling to find words to describe the situation. The word ‘raw’ also has animalistic connotations which shows the situation lacks humanity.
- ‘Bullets smacking the air’ creates a violent image of being unable to breathe; of being overwhelmed and needing to escape.
- ‘Listening…for the reason, of his still running’ illustrates how the soldier pauses to question what he is doing.
- ‘Threw up a yellow hare’ again creates a violent image. The hare is used as a symbol for the soldiers suffering. It is personified and appears to be screaming ‘mouth wide open, silent’.
- ‘King, honour, human dignity etcetera, Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm’. This shows the soldier has abandoned his patriotic values and lost his motivation to fight.
Themes and comparisons
If you’re presented with this poem in the exam you will be asked to compare it to one of the other poems from the anthology in some way. You may also decide to use it as the comparison poem. To do this you need to think about the themes that are presented in the poem and which other poems in the anthology have similar themes. We’ve summarised these briefly below.
Reality of War
Hughes paints a descriptive, confusing image which captures the horrific reality of war.
Compare to:
- Exposure
- Charge of the Light Brigade
- Remains
- Kamikaze
- Poppies
- War Photographer
Effects of War
In the poem Hughes shows that it is not just the soldiers who are attacked; nature suffers too.
Compare to:
- Exposure
- Charge of the Light Brigade
- Remains
- Kamikaze
- War Photographer
What next?
We hope you’ve found this analysis useful, but please remember that we all interpret things differently. Just because we’ve read it one way, does not that it can not have an alternative meaning. Remember that when you’re reading it through – you could pick up on something totally different and that’s fine. There is no right or wrong interpretation of a poem – as long as you can analyse and justify why the poem makes you feel a certain way then there are marks to be had in an exam.
We have prepared a PDF summary sheet containing all of the information on this page which you may find useful when revising. Use this when reading the poem again and make your own notes and highlights. You can download it by clicking on the link below.
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Other Resources
This is a list of resources we’ve found really useful as we’ve been researching. Some of these are free, but some are paid resources. Please note that we do not earn any commission if you choose to purchase using the links below. There’s also some more of our resources below for you to download.
- Mr Bruff – he has some great resources on YouTube and through his website mrbuff.com.
- Collins Snap Revision book from Amazon
- PoemAnalysis.com
- savemyexams.co.uk
- Tips on how to manage exam stress
- Tips on how to revise