English GCSE AQA: Comprehensive Analysis of the Power and Conflict Poems

Bayonet Charge (1957) - Ted Hughes

Précis: The poem depicts a soldier going into combat and provides some stark insights on the interaction of the soldier's body and mind. 

Context: Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire, in the North of England, and grew up in the countryside. He won a scholarship to Cambridge University where he studied Archaeology and Anthropology. The themes of the countryside, human history and mythology therefore already deeply influenced his imagination by the time he started writing poetry as a student.

The poem is about a nameless soldier going over the top in the trenches. Soldiers would have bayonets attached to the end of their rifles and would use them to stab enemy soldiers. The nameless soldier in the poem seems to become more a weapon than a man, rushing toward the enemy. It is not clear at the end whether he dies but there is definitely a change in him. His actions are very raw and primal, much like an animal, suddenly pausing, preparing to react. The poet, Ted Hughes, was a former RAF serviceman and includes a great amount of natural and historical ideas in his poems and he often looks at man's impact on nature.  

Although he was not likely to have ever been marching head-on into death, (rather flying) it is clear that he could empathise with the feelings of the soldiers. The title "Bayonet Charge" shows that Hughes is using a World War I soldier as the main subject of this poem. The soldiers in the first world war would have experienced face to face combat and would have been so close to their enemies that they may have had to use their bayonets to stab the enemy across from them. This is the kind of battle Hughes seems most familiar with. It is not a private matter that Hughes marriage with Sylvia Plath (an American poet to whom he was married whose marriage was ended with her suicide) was a battle. Although it is certainly hyperbole to compare marriage conflict to national conflict, it is common for Hughes to make such striking analogies.  

Themes: This poem tries to step inside the body and mind of a soldier carrying out one of the most terrifying acts of this or any war: charging straight into rifle fire with the aim of killing enemy soldiers face-to-face. In doing so, Hughes dramatises the struggle between a man's thoughts and actions.

At the start of the poem, the solider is instinctively obeying orders. In stanza two he has moments of clarity when he thinks about what he is doing and time seems to stop still.

In the end, all high moral justifications such as king and country, have become meaningless. He himself becomes a form of a human bomb; not a person but a weapon of war.

There are parts of this poem which make us think more of a hunt for animals than humans. The charge to the "green hedge" seems to be more the action of an animal bolting in a field rather than soldiers charging a trench. The inclusion of the yellow hare is also powerful, we see the soldier in a moment of confusion, not sure why he is there and what he is doing, the hare seems to spur him on, either because he does not want to be a coward or because it reflects a brief moment of man and nature connecting before war once again breaks it  

Structure: There are three stanzas and the work is largely blank verse with no set structure. All three are filled with words and images, which could suggest the thick mud appropriate for a poem whose main theme is about a man running across a muddy field carrying a heavy gun. Alternatively, the lines have around five stressed syllables each - some more, some fewer, so one could infer that parts of the poem are strongly iambic and other parts more trochaic. 

In part, the different lines help show the pace of the charge, sometimes fast, sometimes stumbling. Towards the end, it picks up speed, perhaps as he approaches his destination or doom. The poet uses a lot of enjambment and caesuras to give a bizarre and erratic speed to the poem. This helps again give a structure to the speed of the charge but also the confusion and intensity of the battle with explosions and gunfire as well as the jumbled thoughts of the soldier.