Unseen poetry - power and conflict - bayonet charge Flashcards

The personification presents the atmosphere itself as a victim of violence, emphasising the remorseless and indiscriminate nature of war. The verb “hearing” suggests a sensory overload that corrodes the soldier’s emotional stability, as if the constant noise is slowly driving him into psychological torment. Hughes’s choice of the noun “belly” evokes the soft, vulnerable core of a body, implying that even the air is being ruptured at its most vital point. The plural “bullets” reinforces the relentless, mechanical assault that overwhelms the senses, foreshadowing the long‑term trauma many soldiers later carry. By exposing how the environment is torn apart, Hughes dismantles the heroic myth of the soldier and reveals the brutal reality that propaganda conceals — these men are not fearless warriors, but frightened individuals trapped in a conflict that destroys both body and mind.

The use of asyndetic listing conveys the things portrayed as coming as a direct result of going to war. Moreover, the use of the "adverb" etcetera further cements these wars as a hoax and overly exaggerated. The use of the simile shows us the shift back to reality, almost as though these things were a driving force for him to go to war. This links to propaganda as soldiers were overly exaggerated to inherit things just to serve the army, deliberately done by Mr. Hughes, to present to us the psychological manipulation that soldiers had to experience, resulting in PTSD, and makes them realise it really wasnt worth it for this seemingly false and misleading.