Paragraph points: power and conflict

How do the poets present war in bayonet charge and exposure?

• in both poems, we are presented with the ideas that war is not what it’s made out to be

  • Both poets depict soldiers who have reached the battlefield and realised it is different to what they’ve been sold on.

  • Owen uses the rhetorical question ‘what are we doing here?’ repeatedly

  • Hughes uses ‘a rifle numb as a smashed arm’