Brutality of War in Exposure by Wilfred Owen and Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes

Wilfred Owen’s ‘Exposure’ and Ted Hughes ‘Bayonet Charge’ both present the soldiers negativity to war. They reflect the realities faced in war and what it was genuinely like for them through vivid imagery and motifs exploring the suffering and fear they were subjected to through no choice of their own and just how brutal war really is.

In ‘Exposure’ Wilfred Owen discusses the personification ‘iced east winds that knife us’ to show that the weather is as brutal as war. ‘knife’ is a reference to being stabbed and the weather is just as brutal as a battle itself. He was waiting alone in the weather with nothing to keep himself sane. The cold is getting to him a lot as he is waiting around with nothing to do other than feel the cold and listen to what is in the background in what he feels agonising torture waiting for some action. However, In ‘Bayonet Charge’ the poem springs into action through the phrase ‘suddenly he awoke and was running’ this suggests that he was in mid action but was in a mindless state. He was running as if he was on automatic which is a similarity to ‘Exposure’ where everything is the same and they have nothing on their minds that have purpose or importance. This shows that he did not care what life had in store for him anymore, he was just trying to soldier on to do what he can in the time he had. 

The repetition of ‘but nothing happens’ in ‘Exposure’ is used four times to show just how dull everything truly was for him waiting around for something to do. This correlates to ‘Bayonet Charge’ where there are many commas and broken up sentences to enhance the feelings of anxiety which gradually occur throughout the play; at the start, and at the end where we can presume has almost reached his destination. The enhancement of the anxiety speaks for all the soldiers where it is used in the third person to make the soldier anonymous in ‘Bayonet Charge’ this is to allow the poem to speak for all soldiers and show exactly what they are experiencing as a whole and not just from one person’s point of view. 

In ‘Exposure’ the writer blames nature for all the bad living standards they are having to cope with. the phrase ‘the twitching agonies of men among its brambles’ suggests how nature is the one making this a living hell for all the men having to soldier on even in these harsh conditions. The sibilance ‘flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders with black snow’ suggests the noises that were being heard as the bullets were shot off in multiple directions through the repetitive noise of the ‘s’.  The way that Owen stated quick after this that these bullets were ‘less deadly than the air that shudders with black snow’ shows just how brutal the conditions they were forced to live and survive in truly was. However, in ‘Bayonet Charge’, Hughes discusses how the government are to blame for the conditions the soldiers are forced to live in. the phrase ‘King, Honour, Dignity, etcetera’ states how the government want them to soldier on and be brave for their country while they sit there from their own comforts giving orders and watching from further afield. This also brings into discussion the realisation the soldier feels as he no longer cares about those things about being proud and patriotic, he just wants to make it out alive. He hits reality and loses hope in the situation as he has nothing to give, just the aim to survive. Comparatively, in ‘Exposure’ the feelings of hope are lost. The repetition ‘dying’ is repeated three times towards the end to show how all he can think about is that he is not going to make It out of there alive. Owen also discusses how ‘dawn massing in the east’ will mean hope is gone for good. The soldiers had nothing good to look for in the moment which correlates to mental health such as depression and PTSD. The things these soldiers had to sit through and suffer they started to believe was normal.

In ‘Bayonet Charge’ he starts running towards danger face on which is anti-human nature. The world was against them and he felt that there was nothing good to come. Hughes’ father fought in the war and suffered with PTSD which allowed him to write about the stories he has heard and his experience from afar of just how damaging these wars really are on people and how no one cares anymore for them and their wellbeing. The adjectives ‘green hedge’ suggests to us that the soldier could see places all around him to hide but he was unable to head towards there to hide away from the dangers around, the world wanted to shut them out and give humanity what it deserves for destroying the natural world. In ‘Exposure’ themes of nature are also displayed through the world being against them as ‘iced east winds’ were freezing many of the men to death. As stated in ‘Bayonet Charge’ they were in ‘hot khaki, his sweat heavy’ which shows how once the men were wet and damp, they would never get dry again. ‘Exposure’ had the weather battling against them to show that they have done wrong in the eyes of mother nature; the metaphor ‘his frost will settle on the mud and us’ tells us that they were all so cold and damp out in the trenches they were unsure whether or not they will make it out alive.

In conclusion, there are many similarities between ‘Bayonet Charge’ and ‘Exposure’ in their attitudes to war, neither of them thought it was a good thing and all it did was create bad lives to the soldiers who they felt nobody cared about; nature too wanted to harm them both for all the harm they had done to the world. There are also many differences between the two such as the chaos in ‘Bayonet Charge’ and the calmer boredom in ‘Exposure’ which both comparatively played a mental impact on both the men losing hope. In ‘Bayonet Charge’ it took the death of a ‘yellow hare’ to snap him back into reality from his auto pilot episode while running towards his doom. ‘Exposure’ had too much on his mind to think about allowing nature to affect him much more mentally than the physical war really was.