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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.
What is conflict?
What is power?
What is the importance of the patriotic tear?
Why do you think he froze?
Have a read through these slides, really try to engage with how the soldiers would have been feeling, can you empathise? How did this poem make you feel?
The next set of notes are the annotations made from this weeks Zoom meeting on our poem Bayonet Charge, please use them to complete your own annotations and to help in your completion of pg 27+33 for you homework task. You will be required to have them with you in the Zoom lesson next week.
Week 1 - Here is the mind map covering some of the main points we made during our Zoom lesson.
In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.
Carol Ann Duffy
Some points to consider when reading the poem...
Can you recognise the references to photography?
What is the relevance of the colour red?
How do you think it must feel to be the one taking these photos?
Can you notice any biblical references?
Watch this video of a real-life war photographer - Don McCullin - talk about his own experiences, they are quite harrowing!
Please find below the notes from 10A and 10B's group Zoom lessons.
For your homework, please complete Page 117, which requires you to discuss your own thoughts and opinions on the job of a war photographer.
Also, complete Pages 111 and 112 which are questions about Stanza 1 and 2. These must be completed. If you can, then complete Pages 113 and 114.
10A Mrs Wyles' Class
10B Miss Mills' Class
For English Language past papers please click on the AQA Symbol to the right.
For English Literature past papers please click on the AQA Symbol to the left.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Please listen to the dramatised reading of this week's poem.
If you would like a closer look at the poem before/after the zoom lesson here is a video analysis that will help you to gain that greater depth of understanding.
10A work from our Ozymandias Zoom lesson.
Pg 11 of your Power and Conflict Work Booklet.
10B Zoom Meeting notes of Ozymandias