Bayonet Charge: endurance, romanticised, nihilism, existential,
suspended, stasis, epitomises, identifies, conditioned, desensitise, higher
cosmic forces (fate), rhetoric of war
-The power of war to reduce soldiers into weapons of war. The
description of how the soldier ‘lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm’
suggests the extent to which he has become assimilated with the weapon
and reduced by the experience of war.
-The conflict presented is not so much between the warring
soldiers but an internal conflict or existential realisation, suffered by
the soldier at the centre of the poem, who struggles to reconcile the
rhetoric of war with the brutal reality and chaos of battle.
-The poem measures the visceral experience of conflict against the
romanticised fiction that motivates soldiers. The articulation of what
motivated the soldier to go to war in the first place, ‘king, honour, human
dignity’ is rendered hollow with the dismissive word ‘etcetera’ which
undermines the belief in the words which preceded it.
-The powerlessness of the individual soldier in war destined to
follow the commands of their leaders and their duty; who must
surrender to higher cosmic forces or fate. The speaker asks in nihilistic
desperation, ‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he
the hand pointing that second?’
-The power of war to prove destructive and threatening for the natural
world. The natural world proves defenceless against the men in conflict.
An innocent ‘yellow hare’ becomes a symbol of the victims of war as it
‘rolled like a flame’ and ‘crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide
open silent, its eyes standing out.’ This image epitomises the fear and
horror of a battle-scene.
Create quotation bank:
‘raw -seamed hot khaki’; ‘sweat heavy’
‘lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm’
‘in what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand
pointing that second?’
‘king, honour, human dignity…etcetera’
‘Then the shot-slashed furrows threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a
flame
suspended, stasis, epitomises, identifies, conditioned, desensitise, higher
cosmic forces (fate), rhetoric of war
-The power of war to reduce soldiers into weapons of war. The
description of how the soldier ‘lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm’
suggests the extent to which he has become assimilated with the weapon
and reduced by the experience of war.
-The conflict presented is not so much between the warring
soldiers but an internal conflict or existential realisation, suffered by
the soldier at the centre of the poem, who struggles to reconcile the
rhetoric of war with the brutal reality and chaos of battle.
-The poem measures the visceral experience of conflict against the
romanticised fiction that motivates soldiers. The articulation of what
motivated the soldier to go to war in the first place, ‘king, honour, human
dignity’ is rendered hollow with the dismissive word ‘etcetera’ which
undermines the belief in the words which preceded it.
-The powerlessness of the individual soldier in war destined to
follow the commands of their leaders and their duty; who must
surrender to higher cosmic forces or fate. The speaker asks in nihilistic
desperation, ‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he
the hand pointing that second?’
-The power of war to prove destructive and threatening for the natural
world. The natural world proves defenceless against the men in conflict.
An innocent ‘yellow hare’ becomes a symbol of the victims of war as it
‘rolled like a flame’ and ‘crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide
open silent, its eyes standing out.’ This image epitomises the fear and
horror of a battle-scene.
Create quotation bank:
‘raw -seamed hot khaki’; ‘sweat heavy’
‘lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm’
‘in what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand
pointing that second?’
‘king, honour, human dignity…etcetera’
‘Then the shot-slashed furrows threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a
flame
