Bayonet Charge

Poet - Ted Hughes 

Born in 1930 - Died in 1998 

Grew up in the countryside of Yorkshire.

Passionate about animals and nature. 

Devoted to poetry from a young age. 

Poet and childrens writer.

Father served in WW1. 

Obsessed with astrology. 

Poet Laureate 1984-1998.

THEME 

The indescribable horror of war. 

STRUCTURE AND FORM 

Enjambment used to create a disjointed, unordered affect on the reader. Links in to the theme, because the reader, just like the soldier, struggles to understand the chaos and unordered war. 

Also uses caesura, which is where sentences end in the middle of a line. 

Both examples of caesura in the poem occur in the second verse, which is where the soldier stops to consider what he is doing and why. The caesura forces the reader to stop and think just like the soldier. 

Enjambment and caesura combine to create the chaotic structure of the poem which mirrors the war. 

Hughes makes the poem very complicated and difficult to get through deliberatly, to mirror the difficulty of getting through war. 

LANGUAGE 

Repetition of the word 'raw' in…