The Full Text of “Bayonet Charge”
The Full Text of “Bayonet Charge”
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“Bayonet Charge” Introduction
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"Bayonet Charge" was written by British poet Ted Hughes and published in Hughes's first collection, The Hawk in the Rain (1957). Set in the heat of battle, the poem focuses on the thoughts and behavior of a soldier in World War I. This soldier is depicted mid-charge, his bayonet (that is, the blade attached to this end of his gun) primed to attack the enemy. However, he has an epiphany during his charge and suddenly questions why he's there in the first place. Old notions like patriotism and honor seem to fade away as the soldier confronts the absurd reality of war—and of the likelihood of his own death.
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“Bayonet Charge” Summary
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A soldier snaps to consciousness suddenly and realizes that he is in the midst of running somewhere. The unfinished seams of his khaki uniform rub painfully against his skin, and he is sweating profusely. He is clumsily heading over difficult terrain toward a green hedge that is lit up by rifle fire, and he can hear bullets punching through the air. His carries his heavy rifle with effort; it's like an extra arm with no feeling left. His eyes once welled up with patriotic tears, but now he just feels fiery sweat on his chest.
In his confusion, the soldier nearly stops. He suddenly wonders, what unfeeling, calculated forces—be they fate or politics—are governing his actions, as if he were nothing more than the hand of a clock? He runs like a man suspended in the dark, hoping to find an answer to his question in the act of running itself. Time seems to slow down, and his foot hangs in the air in the middle of his stride as if it were a statue.
Then bullets slash through the air and into the ground nearby, causing what looks like a yellow hare to run in frantic circles, its mouth is wide open but silent and its eyes bulging. The soldier pushes onward, pointing the blade affixed to the end of his rifle at the green hedge. Notions of patriotism, fighting for the King, human dignity, and other stuff like all fall away from the soldier, who can't afford to entertain such thoughts in the total chaos of battle. The air explodes with blue light all around the soldier as he reaches nervously for his dynamite.
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“Bayonet Charge” Themes
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The Senselessness of War and Patriotism
“Bayonet Charge” is set in the heat of a battle during which a soldier has a sudden change of heart. Whereas he had previously been motivated to fight by his patriotic commitment to his country, the chaos of the battlefield hits him with a dose of absurd reality: he realizes that war is inherently senseless and that the concepts that he previously held dear are ultimately hollow. Of course, it’s now too late for him to do anything about this. The poem thus measures the visceral experience of actual conflict against the kind of romanticized fictions that might make people decide to go war in the first place.
The poem opens with the soldier making his “bayonet charge”—running at the enemy with the sharp knife on his gun pointed straight at them. Gunfire and artillery shells are going off all around, making war a very immediate and terrifying experience—contrasting with whatever romanticized notions the soldier might have had about war before going to battle.
This idea is introduced from the very first line: “Suddenly he awoke and was running.” The notion of waking up suggests that he is only now exiting a dream and entering reality. In other words, he’s literally heading away from the illusory idea of war that he once believed to be true, and into the true terror of actual armed conflict.
The rest of the first stanza uses intense images and strained grammar to give the reader a sense of this dawning reality. The soldier is surrounded by “rifle fire” that seems to “smack the belly out of the air.” His rifle is compared to the “numbness of a smashed arm,” which is an entirely feasible injury in armed conflict. Because the soldier might die at any moment, patriotism is addressed head-on: it was a “tear that had brimmed in his eye” that is now “like molten iron [in] the centre of his chest.” In other words, war has transformed from a somewhat emotional fantasy to a deadly reality, with the “molten iron” simile pre-empting the soldier’s likely violent death.
As the soldier continues to run, he senses that he is just a metaphorical cog in a machine: “in what cold clock of the stars and the nations / was he the hand pointing that second?” The poem implies that he's nothing more than a tool of war and that his urge to protect his country is not returned—his country won’t protect him from the horrible reality he now finds himself in. He continues to “run” (to charge with his bayonet), but cannot hear “the reason / Of his still running.” In other words, he is struck by how little his patriotism means to him now, suggesting that patriotism is a hollow concept in the first place.
Still acting automatically, he then thinks about “King, honour, human dignity, etcetera”—yet all of these drop away like “luxuries.” This reveals that they were indulgences in the first place, concepts that ultimately have no bearing on the reality of war.
Examining the list closely, it’s notable that the third and fourth words don’t normally belong with the first two (which essentially express the old vow to die for King/Queen and country). Like allegiance to the King, “human dignity” is a distant unrelated concept because, put frankly, the soldier can’t see any of it around him anymore. The “etcetera” is intentionally flippant, highlighting that this is a list of hollow words, no more meaningful to the soldier now than an old shopping list.
And that’s where the poem ends, leaving the soldier deep in the horrific reality of war. He knows what he’s supposed to do—use his “bayonet” and “dynamite”—but there’s a distinct lack of other humans, friend or foe. Ultimately, the soldier is isolated by his epiphany, realizing that he is likely about to become nothing more than a statistic—one of the many lives wasted by war.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-23
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Bayonet Charge”
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Lines 1-5
Suddenly he awoke ...
... the air –The poem opens in media res—in the middle of the action. The poem focuses on a single soldier who, as the title suggests, is in the middle of charging at the enemy with his bayonet (roughly setting the poem in the First World War). He is described as "suddenly" awake, which could mean that he had been sleeping during a lull in the battle.
That's pretty unlikely, of course; this is probably a metaphorical way of saying that the soldier suddenly becomes acutely aware of the horror and chaos around him like never before. This sudden awakening also foreshadows the soldier's epiphany that comes later in the poem, in which it dawns on him that patriotism is a hollow concept that means little in actual war—that he has, in some way, been duped.
The soldier is "heavy" with sweat and is described as "raw" (with that word repeated twice in quick succession). This relates to his physical exertion, but also to the intense fear that he feels as he enters the heat of battle. The intentionally awkward use of caesura and enjambment in the first two lines conveys the confusion and disorientating chaos of warfare:
Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw
In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,Lines 3 and 4 intensify the sensory overload of the battlefield. The thick consonance in line 3 feels strained and cumbersome, evoking the difficult terrain over which the soldier makes his charge:
Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge
Rifle fire "dazzle[s]" the soldier's peripheral vision, building a sense of immediate threat. The poem uses an intentionally weird metaphor here as well, describing the gunfire as "smacking the belly out of the air." This metaphor doesn't quite seem to make sense—the air doesn't have anything like a belly; instead, this points to the intense force of the bullets as they fly past.
The image, combined with the /b/ alliteration ("Bullets" and "belly"), is unquestionably violent, and suggests that the soldier is lucky for every additional moment he avoids being hit. The end-stop here, executed with an m-dash after the word "air," also looks like a blast of horizontal rifle fire and interrupts the flow of the poem.
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Lines 6-8
He lugged a ...
... his chest, – -
Lines 9-11
In bewilderment then ...
... pointing that second? -
Lines 11-15
He was running ...
... Statuary in mid-stride. -
Lines 15-18
Then the shot-slashed ...
... eyes standing out. -
Lines 19-23
He plunged past ...
... terror’s touchy dynamite.
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“Bayonet Charge” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is a prominent device in "Bayonet Charge." Throughout the poem, groups of shared sounds are used to help the poem convey a violent atmosphere, the loudness of those sounds reflecting the noise and chaos of the battlefield.
In addition to the above effect, there's also something very claustrophobic about the way that /r/, /s/, /h/, and /c/ sounds are used in the first three lines:
Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw
In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,
Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedgeThese sounds work hard to bring the image to life. First of all, their claustrophobic closeness suggests the way that, though the soldier is surrounded by other soldiers, he is a resolutely solitary figure. This sense of claustrophobia is bolstered by consonance as well as the assonance of /aw/ and /eh/ sounds throughout. The /s/ sounds (sibilance, technically) suggest a sense of hissing, taunting awareness, while the /r/ relates to the friction pain of his uniform as he runs. The /h/ sounds are breathy, conveying exhaustion.
Later, the /b/ sounds in line 5 ("Bullets" and "belly") come across as aggressive and violent, helping the reader to imagine the bullets flying all over the place. The sharpness of "cold clockwork" has a similar effect, bringing the cruelty of the battlefield to life.
Another important moment of alliteration pops up in the last line. Here, the two /t/ sounds in "terror's touchy dynamite" (which are also consonant with the /t/ in the poem's last word) have a jumpy, nervy feel to them. This helps the poem end on an unresolved note of fear, the reader kept in the dark about what happens next (but aware that the probable result of the "Bayonet Charge" is the soldier's death).
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Suddenly,” “running,” “raw”
- Line 2: “raw-seamed,” “hot,” “his,” “sweat,” “heavy”
- Line 3: “Stumbling,” “across,” “clods,” “hedge”
- Line 5: “Bullets,” “belly”
- Line 10: “cold clockwork”
- Line 11: “he,” “hand”
- Line 13: “reason”
- Line 14: “running,” “his,” “hung”
- Line 15: “Statuary,” “stride,” “slashed”
- Line 18: “silent,” “standing”
- Line 19: “plunged past”
- Line 21: “like luxuries”
- Line 23: “terror’s touchy”
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Rhetorical Question
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Simile
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"Bayonet Charge" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Raw-seamed
- Khaki
- Clods
- Lugged
- Bewilderment
- Footfalls
- Statuary
- Furrows
- Threshing circle
- Bayonet
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(Location in poem: Line 2: “raw-seamed”)
The seams of the soldier's uniform are rubbing against his skin as he runs, making it sore.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Bayonet Charge”
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Form
Though it might look like it on first glance, "Bayonet Charge" doesn't have a strict poetic form. The first and last stanzas are octets, meaning they have eight lines, and the middle stanza is a septet, meaning it has just seven.
Though not really part of a specific form, note how the poem opens up right in the middle of the action—the first line thrusting the reader into the middle of the battlefield. This starts things off on a chaotic, confusing note.
The other important thing to notice is the way that the middle stanza differs from the first and last. While the first and last are primarily full of action, in the second stanza time seems to stand still. This is the crux of the poem, the moment in which the soldier has an epiphany (which is unfortunately way too late for him). He "almost stop[s]," suddenly seeing with painful clarity the absurdity and senselessness of war.
And then, just as the reader is plunged right into the action by the poem's abrupt opening line, they are pulled violently out of the poem at the end. The soldier makes it to the target—"the green hedge"—but whether he survives or not is left up to the reader's imagination.
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Meter
"Bayonet Charge" does not use a strict metrical scheme, with the amount of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line varying throughout the poem. Instead, it's a free verse poem. Broadly speaking, this keeps the poem feeling unpredictable and chaotic—much like the battle it describes.
That isn't to say that there aren't some metrical effects here and there, though. Look at the way that "Stumbling" at the start of line 3—which starts the line with an unavoidable stress—seems to evoke the action of stumbling, conveying the soldier's difficulty with the battlefield terrain. Similarly, stresses at the start of line 5 have a powerful effect—"Bullets smacking"—creating a violent and harsh sound.
The meter in the last line has an interesting effect:
His terror’s touchy dynamite.
The stresses here are actually in an iambic pattern—da DUM da DUM da DUM. This creates the sense that the soldier is juggling the dynamite from hand to hand—from stressed to unstressed syllable—unsure of what he's supposed to do. The meter here helps the poem end on a cliffhanger, leaving the reader to guess what happens next.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Bayonet Charge" doesn't really use rhyme. It's written in free verse, without a set rhyme scheme or meter. Broadly speaking, this adds to the poem's sense of instability and unpredictability—which is very fitting for a poem set on a battlefield. Having a neat and tidy rhyme scheme would work against the poem's atmosphere of chaos, frantic confusion, and threat. That is, it would be far too much order in a discussion of what is ultimately a very disordered situation!
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“Bayonet Charge” Speaker
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"Bayonet Charge" focuses on one character only—the soldier making that charge. Readers are never told who this soldier is fighting for, however, nor who his enemy is. This helps the poem's critique of war become more universal; the poem isn't condemning a certain side, but the act of war itself.
The poem is told entirely in the third person, with no attempt to clarify or identify the speaker themselves. Yet, at the same time, the poem does have privileged access to the soldier's thoughts and feelings. Indeed, the poem's main focus is on the change of heart the soldier undergoes as he rushes towards the enemy, the complete switch in the way that he views war.
The detachment of the poem's voice versus its intimate knowledge of the details of the soldier's mind creates a sense of tension in the poem, making the soldier seem like a distant figure. This adds to the sense that the soldier, though surrounded by other soldiers, is utterly alone—particularly in the cold light of his epiphany about the absurdity of war. Another way of looking at it is that there is a parallel between the way that the soldier suddenly feels himself to be a cog in the machinery of war (see the second stanza) and the way that the poem observes him from a distance—he is powerless over both the war and his role in the poem.
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“Bayonet Charge” Setting
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The poem is set in the heat of battle—where, exactly, is unclear. This is intentional: readers don't know who this soldier is fighting for, which "nations" he serves on behalf of. Though it's arguably Britain given that Hughes himself was British and Britain indeed has a "King," this isn't definite. This helps the poem's message about war remain more universal.
That said, the mention of bayonets and rifles, combined with this poem's relationship with other poems in Hughes's first collection, mean it's fair to read this as a poem about World War I (though it doesn't say explicitly). Hughes didn't serve in either of the 20th century's great wars (he was too young), but his father fought in the First World War.
In any case, the poem evokes the horror of battle in general. It begins in media res—in the middle of the action—and, indeed, it ends there too. The poem builds a sense of a chaotic, frightening, and frenetic environment. But just as it is set on the battlefield, it's also set within the soldier's psyche. Indeed, it's within the soldier's innermost thoughts that the most important part of the poem takes place—his epiphany (in stanza two), in which he suddenly sees, too clearly and too late, the absurdity of the war in which he is likely to meet his death.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Bayonet Charge”
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Literary Context
Ted Hughes was one of the most significant British poets of the 20th century. He grew up in West Riding, Yorkshire, a relatively rural part of England, cultivating an early interest in the natural world and often hunting and fishing.
"Bayonet Charge" is one of a number of poems in Hughes's first collection that focus on the First World War. Hughes's father served in this conflict, and Hughes himself grew up during World War II (though was too young to fight). Though he wasn't a war poet, the experiences of war were thus still close at hand. Indeed, one academic, Dennis Walder, describes Hughes as a "war poet at one remove, writing out of the impact of memory—the individual memory of his father, and the collective memory of English culture."
This places this side of Hughes's poetry in a kind of alternative tradition: war poetry drawn not from direct combat experience, but rather from the post-war cultural atmosphere and perhaps—in Hughes's case at least—childhood memories of the war years. The two world wars were, of course, two of the most cataclysmic events in human history—and so it follows that poetry would try to make sense of them in the years after, even if it was primarily to foreground war's senselessness. Significant poems in this loosely defined alternative tradition, then, could be "The Lost Pilot" by James Tate, "Znamenskaya Square, Leningrad, 1941" by Sharon Olds, and "The Hiroshima Horse" by Jack Barrack, to name a few.
There is, of course, a rich collection of war poetry written by those who actually fought as well, such as the works of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen ("Dulce et Decorum Est," "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "Futility"), and Robert Graves. Owen, who served and died in WWI, is especially famous for his critical stance on the war. Like Hughes's poem, Owen's work presented war as futile, wasteful, and horrific. On the other side of the Atlantic, American poets Randall Jarrell and Karl Shapiro also made a key contribution to the war poetry genre.
Historical Context
The historical context of this poem is the First World War. Though it isn't stated explicitly, the khaki, bayonet, rifles, and nature of combat—trench warfare—make this setting clear. The poem is also part of a group of poems in Hughes's first collection on the same subject. At the time, this war was described with the term "the war to end all wars"—a phrase that of course turned out to be tragically inaccurate with the onset of World War II. Around 16 million people died directly in WWI, with many more perishing in the great flu outbreaks and conflicts that followed.
Life in the trenches of Europe during the war was terrifying and deadly, and the poor conditions caused frequent sickness and disease. Soldiers were often delirious with sleep deprivation—perhaps referenced in the first line here—and the nature of combat was chaotic and confusing. The soldier's epiphany in this poem—in which he suddenly seems to perceive the absurdity of war and the hollowness of patriotism—subtly mirrors the shift in public mood during the war from nervous excitement in the beginning to battle-weary depression by the end.
This poem was first published in the late 1950s. The specter of the two world wars still loomed large over the world, but a booming economy in America and a rebuilding Europe began to make the world feel like it was moving on from its self-inflicted 20th century horrors. Tensions between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, however, rose during the '50s. Ultimately, the world found itself on the brink of an all-out nuclear war—which most likely would have surpassed the destruction and devastation of both world wars combined.
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More “Bayonet Charge” Resources
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External Resources
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Plath and Hughes Interviewed — A fascinating discussion with Ted Hughes and the American poet (and Hughes's wife) Sylvia Plath.
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A Documentary about Hughes — A BBC show about Hughes's life and work.
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Ted Hughes and War — An interesting article about Ted Hughes's war poems.
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Ted Hughes at the British Library — More resources and a biography of Hughes, from the British Library.
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The Bayonet — An insightful look at the history of the bayonet and its role in warfare.
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Hughes's Life and Work — Resources from the Poetry Foundation on More Poems and Biography
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Ted Hughes
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