How is violent conflict represented in 'Remains' and 'Bayonet Charge'?
‘Bayonet Charge’ and ‘Remains’ are deeply disturbing, violent poems that deal with the intimate effects of war upon the individual soldier. At the same time, they are both political poems that seem to place their combatants as pawns in a global political game over which they have no control. Despite these similarities, the poems are written in very different ways, Hughes using a good deal of figurative language, whilst Armitage's poem is written in the colloquial language of the soldier himself.
‘Bayonet Charge’ indirectly references the physical injuries inflicted during the First World War. Hughes personifies the ‘air' saying that ‘bullets smack the belly out of the air' so his ‘bullets’ do not directly ‘smack’ a human belly, but rather something far more universal - the air. Whilst this avoids the shock value of actual human horror, it makes the effect of the line to suggest that bullets are everywhere and so powerful that they can damage the air itself. In addition, Hughes' image of ‘the hare’ and its suffering is symbolic of a soldier’s injuries, ‘rolled like a flame’ the simile suggesting burning in agony and ‘its mouth wide’ mirroring the pain of an injured soldier. ‘Remains’ also depicts physical pain and suffering, but in a much more direct and less figurative way. Armitage describes ‘every round as it rips through (the looter's) life’ and how his injuries are so severe that the speaker can see ‘broad daylight on the other side’. This is gruesome imagery without any poetic gloss, in fact the man becomes ‘pain itself, the image of agony’. This echoes the image of Hughes’ hare ‘rolling’ and ‘crawling’ in agony. However, in ‘Remains’, it is not only the physical injuries inflicted by war, but also the psychological effects that the soldier is suffering from. He cannot ‘blink ... sleep (or) dream’ without seeing the man being ‘torn apart by a dozen rounds’. Whilst Hughes doesn't directly discuss the psychological effects of war, his use of figurative language suggests deeper layers of harm that are universal in nature. They affect the individual, but also the whole of mankind.
Both poems imply that the soldiers they depict are pawns in a political game not of their making. Hughes does this by likening his soldier to a cog in the metaphorical ‘cold clockwork of the stars and nations’. The soldier seems to become aware of his position in this ‘clockwork’ for a second as he ‘almost stopped’ but in reality is ‘still running’ and trying to ‘listen’ for ‘the reason of his still running’. This imagery constructs a soldier who is doing, almost without thinking and that the suffering he is enduring, as well as the harm he is likely to inflict, is not of his own making. In a much subtler way, ‘Remains’ also critiques the political decisions that have led to the suffering of the soldiers in the poem. The speaker says he ‘is sent out’ to ‘tackle looters’ so this is clearly a soldier lower down the ranks, to some extent he is just following orders. However, his decision to open fire is shared between himself and ‘somebody else and somebody else’ the repetition here emphasising that he has forgotten his comrades’ names, or that they weren't that important. There doesn't seem to have been any oversight from his commanding officer as to whether the killing of the looter was justified - we never find out the answer to the question ‘probably armed, possibly not’ even when it is repeated at later in the poem. The consequences of his actions are more important to the individual than to the political powers that control them. The description of the setting as ‘some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land' emphasises the idea that the work that the speaker is doing is out of the sight and mind of politicians back home. The setting strongly suggests either the recent war in Iraq or Afghanistan and we know that these conflicts were messy, asymmetric warfare with messy and complex outcomes. Armitage is strongly suggesting this with the messy consequences for the looter who was shot and also for the speaker in the poem.
Despite these similarities of theme, the two poems have distinctly different atmospheres and language. ‘Remains’ uses colloquial language, being written entirely in the first person, in the voice of the soldier. He uses verbs like ‘legs it’ and ‘carted off’ which give the poem an almost light-hearted, blackly humorous tone, despite its gruesome subject matter. This really emphasises the moments of arresting poetic imagery, for example the ‘broad daylight’ that the soldier can see on the ‘other side’ of the man he has shot, the ‘blood shadow’ that lingers on the street, haunting him and that memories of the looter are ‘dug in behind enemy lines’ every time he closes his eyes. In contrast, Hughes’ poem is much less direct and full of metaphor. It is written in the third-person, so the reader is like an observer of events, rather than looking over the shoulder of a participant. This may reflect Hughes’ distance from events, writing many years after the First World War, but it also allows him to explore a more general audience – the soldier in the poem could represent every soldier who suffered violently in the trenches.
Whilst these poets have taken very different approaches to their depictions of very different wars, they have nonetheless explored similar themes: physical and psychological harm and the powerlessness of the individual in the face of global politics. They both depict violence but use it to highlight the wider consequences of war.
