I’m playing around with starting a YouTube channel, a little side project, and I just put out my first video.
This one is a quick analysis of Ted Hughes’ poem ‘Bayonet Charge’, which you might find useful if you’re doing the Power and Conflict module for GCSE English Literature. Or maybe you just enjoy thinking about great poetry.
I’ll put up more information about this new channel project soon, but for now I think it’s best just to get the ball rolling and send that first video out there.
Definitely a niche audience, and I’m still very much a beginner at all this. Lots of new challenges, from video editing, to voice over production, so please don’t judge too harshly, but I rather enjoyed doing it. It was a nice break from just writing.
I’ll put the transcript for the video below, but make sure you check out my longer 47-minute line-by-line analysis of Ted Hughes’ ‘Bayonet Charge’ if you need more to think about:
How Ted Hughes Writes A Poem – Transcript:
I can think of no better poem that so perfectly captures the feelings of fear, confusion, and futility that war creates than Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes.
When we think of the horrors of war, those of us fortunate enough to have not experienced conflict first hand typically rely on films such as Saving Private Ryan or TV series like Band of Brothers to leave an indelible scar on our consciousness. But with a toolkit comprised only of words and their sound, position, and relation to each other, Ted Hughes has managed to craft an image of war that, for me, is the most haunting.
Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes
Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw
In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,
Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge
That dazzled with rifle fire, hearing
Bullets smacking the belly out of the air –
He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;
The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye
Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest, –
In bewilderment then he almost stopped –
In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations
Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running
Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs
Listening between his footfalls for the reason
Of his still running, and his foot hung like
Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows
Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame
And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide
Open silent, its eyes standing out.
He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terror’s touchy dynamite.
Look at that last word.
Dynamite.
The way Hughes conceives of his terror as something that might explode at the slightest touch. Indeed throughout the poem it feels as though the fuse of a dynamite has been lit and we are watching the flame sizzle ever closer to the nitroglycerin-packed base.
The dynamite is lit from the first word: Suddenly.
We are thrown, dropped, against our will into the heat of the action.
This is a narrative device called in medias res, which is latin for “in the middle of things”, and has been employed in some of the greatest works of literature, such as Homer’s Odyssey.
Directors often choose to use in medias res for their war films. Think of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, that opening scene on the beach with bullets flying. Think of Nolan’s Dunkirk, the soldier running for his life.
Hughes makes this poetic decision because it perfectly captures the disorientation soldiers feel in war. One moment you’re sleeping, sleeping with your bayonet clutched to your chest, the next moment you’re running, sweat heavy, stumbling towards enemy lines and you don’t know why.
Hughes wants our hearts pounding right from the beginning. He wants us to be inside that solider. And make no mistake.
We are that soldier.
Hughes doesn’t name this soldier, opting only to use the third person pronoun “he”. This man is a universal stand-in for us all.
A further effect of this linguistic choice is its ability to convey a sense of anonymity and isolation. This soldier doesn’t even know who he is. In the heat of battle, running towards one’s death, does it even matter?
This sense of anonymity is made all the more jarring and isolating by the fact that no other soldier is mentioned in the poem. The soldier is charging at enemy lines, but all he sees is rifle fire. The only other living thing depicted in this poem is a rabbit, a “yellow hare”.
Those who don’t think too deeply about poetry might miss the significance of that detail. Hughes is famous for his agricultural themes and imagery, so it’s only natural that Bayonet Charge, like his other poems, would feature wildlife. But the hare and the language used to describe it is no accident. Just like the solider is a stand-in for us, for every soldier, the hare is a representation of the soldier.
The hare is threw up.
This violent forceful choice of verb contains the implicit idea that the hare is being acted upon against its will. It didn’t choose to jump or leap up. It was thrown up by the shot-slashed furrows. Then rolled like a flame. This image of natural innocence described in terms of warfare and violence.
When the hare does reclaim a sense of autonomy by crawling it does so in a threshing circle. It has become a lifeless, senseless machine thanks to humanity’s senseless warfare.
And why describe this creature in terms of agricultural machinery? I believe that the narrative is written in third person omniscient narration. When Hughes poses a question, it’s a question only a soldier in this situation would ask. So we’re split. Inside his mind, but also experiencing somewhat of an outer body experience.
We’re seeing things through the soldier’s eyes. And the solider sees the hare like a piece of threshing equipment because he’s just a country farm boy.
Look back to the word ‘raw’ in the first line, swiftly repeated again in the second line. Raw can mean physically and emotionally uncomfortable. But it has a double meaning in the sense of being inexperienced.
Many of the men who signed up for the first world war lied about their age. Could it be that the soldier, like the hare, is simultaneously in and outside the world he truly belongs too?
The battle is being fought across rural farm grounds, but he’s not used to the hedges dazzling with rifle fire. He has a rifle but it’s nothing but a burden.
Look at that verb – lugged. And look at how it’s described – like a smashed arm. Not only is the rifle useless for this soldier, not only is it weighing him down, but this also either conveys an injury the soldier is now familiar with or foreshadows an injury to come.
We have the luxury of time to ponder this. Like the “luxuries” of meaningless propaganda-esque platitudes of “king, honour” and “human dignity” – these grand ideas undermined by the “etcetera” that follows them – but the soldier does not have the luxury of time.
He’s breathless.
The abundance of h sounds at the beginning forcing us to replicate the sound of frenzied breath. He’s stumbling. And he doesn’t understand what’s happening around him.
Look at how the soldier sees the rifle fire before he hears it. Sight comes first. Then hearing the bullets smacking the belly out of the air comes second.
Sight and sound are dissociated.
We are in a nightmare. One that the soldier can only think about for the brief fractions of a second between his footfalls.
He wonders in what cold clockwork was he that hand pointing? The soldier just a cog in a machine. One that is cold, indifferent, uncaring towards him. And time is running out.
Before he’s even able to answer the question, he’s back in his running body, breathlessness created by enjambment across three lines.
We, like the soldier, cannot even pause for breath. Not until the poem ends on that explosive final word – dynamite.
Then the poem stops.
So does the soldier.
And so do we.
If you check out the video, let me know your thoughts. And if you enjoy this sort of thing, you’ll probably enjoy the online learning platform Skillshare. You can get two months free through this link.