poem

The poem “Bayonet Charge” by British poet Ted Hughes is about the catastrophic effects of war on the inner world of a human being and the natural world. Ted Hughes focuses on the inner conflict of a soldier struggling between his duty and instinctual self-preservation. The poem explores the tragic reality of war through the transformation of a young soldier into a killing machine while charging an enemy position in the First World War. The poet describes how the soldier’s humanity and patriotism is lost during the process, being replaced by fear and ultimately resulting in the creation of a human weapon that is only driven by the human instinct of survival.

The persona of the poem is anonymous since the soldier is referred to as ‘he’ without having a specific name. Through the use of the third person pronoun, the soldier is presented as a universal figure representing all the soldiers who fought and sacrificed their lives in the First World War. In this way, the poet suggests that millions of soldiers regardless of nationality experienced the same moments of violence. Therefore, the poet expresses his empathy towards them and tries to capture the feeling of horror which conquered them in the battlefield, thus revealing his negative attitude towards war and demonstrating its devastating effects on people.

Moreover, the poem is divided into three stanzas. Each stanza represents a different part of the bayonet charge displaying the process in which the soldier loses his humanity. The first stanza presents the soldier as he suddenly begins to run, thus portraying his instinctual and impulsive actions which are driven by his duty and feelings of patriotism. The second stanza demonstrates a deceleration of action, thus illustrating t...

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...rough this metaphor, the poet presents war as a cause of the destruction of human life, not only in terms of death but also in terms of humanity since the soldier would rather kill than be killed. In this way, the poet creates an image of the dramatic consequences of war on human beings since it has the power to turn them into cold and detached killing machines not driven by any emotions other than fear. Ted Hughes also lists the grand themes of conflict: “King, honour, dignity, etcetera.” The poet suggests that these conceptions of war are illusory and deceiving since the soldier no longer values them, thus expressing once again the vanity of war. Therefore, the poet implies that the reasons for going to war are now unremarkable to the soldier since his actions are not driven by orders or his feelings of patriotism but driven by pure instinctual self-preservation.