Bayonet charge

ted hughes

Published: 1957

Birth – Death: 1930 - 1998

Monarch: Elizabeth II

Prime Minister: Harold Macmillan (Conservative)

Nationality: English

'Bayonet Charge' was published in Hughes's first collection, The Hawk in the Rain (Published in 1957). It is a series of poems dealing with the impact of the First World War, in which the poet's father and uncle fought. Hughes grew up believing that 'the whole region (West Yorkshire) was in mourning' for the First World War.

Who is ted hughes?

Hughes was a poet, playwright and children’s writer.

Hughes was born in Yorkshire to William Henry and Edith Hughes and was raised among local farms and moorlands. When he was young, he acted as retriever when his elder brother gamekeeper shot magpies, owls, rats and curlews, growing up surrounded by the harsh realities of working farms in the valleys and on the moors.

Hughes had a sister named Olwyn Marguerite Hughes (1928-2016) who was 2 years older and had a brother named Gerald (1920-2016) who was 10 years older.

His father was one of just 17 men of his regiment to return from the Dardanelles Campaign (1915–16).

Hughes loved to fish, hunt, swim and have picnics with his family. His parents ran a newsagent’s and tobacconist’s shop. He came to view fishing as an almost religious experience when visiting a friends’ family.

Hughes attended Mexborough Grammar School, where several teachers encouraged him to write, and develop his interest in poetry. Teachers Miss McLeod and Pauline Mayne introduced him to the poets Hopkins and Eliot. Hughes was mentored by his sister Olwyn, who was well versed in poetry, and another teacher, John Fisher. By 16 he had his mind set on becoming a poet.

During the same year Hughes won an open exhibition in English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but chose to do his National Service first. Hughes was stationed as a ground wireless mechanic in the RAF on an isolated three-man station in east Yorkshire, a time during which he had nothing to do but "read and reread Shakespeare and watch the grass grow".

After university, living in London and Cambridge, Hughes went on to have many varied jobs including working as a rose gardener, a night watchman and a reader for the British film company J. Arthur Rank.

In a party to launch St. Botolph’s Review he met Sylvia Plath who was studying at Cambridge, she had already won awards for her poems and had several poems published.

He served as a poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998.

Hughes and Plath dated and then were married at St George the Martyr Holborn, on 16 June 1956, four months after they had first met.

The couple moved to America so that Plath could take a teaching position at Smith College, during this time Hughes taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

They were both writing, Hughes working on programs for the BBC as well as producing essays, articles, reviews and talks.

Hughes and Plath had two children, Frieda Rebecca (1960) and Nicholas Farrar (1962–2009).

Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.

In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill who had been subletting the Primrose Hill flat with her husband. Due to his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962 and she set up life in a new flat with the children.

In 2017 previously, unpublished letters were described in which Plath accuses Hughes of physically abusing her months before she miscarried their second child in 1961. Perhaps prompting her suicide.

On 23 March 1969, six years after Plath's suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way.

Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes, born on 3 March 1965. Their deaths led to claims that Hughes had been abusive to both Plath and Wevill.

His last poetic work: Birthday Letters (Published in 1998) explored his and Plath’s complicated relationship with each other. It references Plath’s suicide but doesn’t directly state the circumstances of her death.

A poem was discovered in October 2010 revealed what happened during the last 3 days before Plath’s suicide.

In August 1970, Hughes married Carol Orchard, a nurse, and they remained together until his death.

Hughes was appointed a member of the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II just before he died.

He continued to live at the house in Devon, until suffering a fatal myocardial infarction on 28 October 1998 while undergoing hospital treatment for colon cancer in Southwark, London.

His funeral was held on 3 November 1998, at North Tawton church, and he was cremated in Exeter.

Nicholas Hughes, the son of Hughes and Plath, died by suicide in his home in Alaska on 16 March 2009 after suffering from depression.

In 2017, it was revealed that letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963 claim that Hughes beat Plath two days before she had a miscarriage in 1961, and that Hughes told Plath he wished that she was dead. The letters were sent to Dr. Ruth Barnhouse (then Dr. Ruth Beuscher).

what is ted hughes poetic history?

Hughes's earlier poetic work is referred to nature and, in particular, the innocent savagery of animals, an interest from an early age.

He wrote frequently of the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world.

Hughes's later work is deeply reliant upon myth and the British bardic tradition (Bards were “responsible for the oral preservation and transmission of the language, history, genealogies and spiritual wisdom of each Celtic tribe”), heavily impacted with a modernist, Jungian (“Emphasizes the importance of the individual psyche and the personal quest for wholeness”) and ecological viewpoint.

His main influences were William Blake, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Gerard Manley Hopkins. He mentioned also Schopenhauer, Robert Graves's book The White Goddess and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

In addition to his own poetry, Hughes wrote a number of translations of European plays, mainly classical ones.

Bayonet Charge was presumably influenced by the fact that Hughes’ father was a war veteran of the First World War and had survived his regiments massacre at Gallipoli, as well as Wilfred Owen’s poetry.

what is bayonet charge about?

Bayonet Charge was one of the 6 poems in The Hawk in The Rain, which was his first published collection of poems. Sylvia Plath typed this poem up and entered them into a competition, which Hughes won resulting in the book being published.

Wilfred Owen once wrote a poem about a bayonet charge called Spring Offensive which shares a lot of similarities with Hughes poem.

A bayonet is a knife or dagger at the end of a rifle. Soldiers would use these to conserve ammunition, or if they ran out of ammunition.

World War One was the start of using bigger and better weaponry.

Charges only occurred if an opportunity was there, there were never any plans.

Many soldiers who were in World War One were heavily influenced by the media, as they glorified the war, as if it was a worthy cause. They were encouraged to die for their country by propaganda and military service was being held in high regards.

The bayonet was originally a defensive weapon. Infantry could defend their position against a cavalry charge. Bayonet charges were rarely attempted until the enemy was retreating.

In the First World War all infantrymen were provided with bayonets. The bayonet was the infantryman's primary close combat weapon in trench warfare. However, some soldiers preferred to rely on clubs or knuckledusters in these situations.

world war one facts

World War One killed an estimated 37 million people, with the British Empire losing over 900,000 casualties.

World War 1 began on July 28, 1914. The conflict lasted four years, three months and 14 days, ending on November 11, 1918.

The war began because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. He was heir to throne of Austria-Hungary and his death was the immediate cause of WW1.

There were two sides in the war. The Triple Ententes (also known as The Allies) were Britain, France, Ireland and Russia. The Central Powers were Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Italy originally joined the Central powers but later joined on the side of Triple Entente.

WW1 officially ended on June 28, 1919. This was exactly five years since the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The armistice on November 11, 1918 ended the fighting, but it took another six months to negotiate peace before the Treaty of Versailles could be prepared.

9 out of 10 British soldiers survived.

A boy called Sidney Lewis (12 years old) lied about his age so that he could join the war and fight for his country. He was one of 250,000 underage soldiers and many of them lied so that they could enlist. Most did it because they love their country, and some to escape their poor lives.

Journalists were banned from reporting because the British Government wanted to control the information from the trenches and the War Office considered reporting on it as helping the enemy. If caught, a journalist would face the death penalty. Despite this, a handful of journalists did report on the war to show the harsh conditions the soldiers faced.

The majority of WW1 was fought in muddy trenches, but one group of miners dug underground tunnels to detonate mines behind enemy trenches. One mine, in Messines Ridge in Belgium, detonated 900,000lbs of explosives and destroyed the German front line. This explosion was so loud and so powerful that the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, heard it all the way back in Downing Street, London — 140 miles away.

Many soldiers who were in World War One were heavily influenced by the media, as they glorified the war, as if it was a worthy cause. They were encouraged to die for their country by propaganda and military service was being held in high regards. Although the harsh reality they were placed in was far from glory. Many soldiers were not prepared for such brutality and exposure to dirt, low temperatures, violence, weapons and pain.