Comparison of ‘Bayonet Charge’ and ‘Belfast Confetti’ Essay

Both capital of Union Ireland Confetti and stab Charge present individuals caught up in conflicts. However, the speaker in Belfast Confetti is a civilian whereas Bayonet Charge the subject is a pass who has chosen to go to war. Carson is writing about a topic he knows well as he is an Irish poet living during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hughes is imagining what it must overhear been like for a spend in innovation War One.The speaker in Belfast Confetti is right in the pose of the action Suddenly as the riot squad moved in and is caught up in the streets of Belfast during a bomb scare. He is panicking beca practise he cannot escape the internal ear of the streets although he knows them very well. Calling the streets a labyrinth is a fable which shows the confusion and panic he feels as a labyrinth is something you cannot get out of. Carson uses punctuation mark as a metaphor for the riot squad itself as they block the streets and stop the speaker escaping barricade w ith stops and colons. This is effective because punctuation is used to control and give pose to a sentence and this is what the riot squad are onerous to do in the nut house of the city.Carson also uses punctuation as a metaphor for shrapnel, saying that it is raining exclamation marks which is the metal objects the IRA would concourse into their homemade bombs. This is effective because exclamation marks look a slice like lethal weapons because they are thin and sharp like a tomahawk. The speaker feels trapped not only by the riot itself just he is trapped in the political situation of the time. The two sides were trying to resolve conflict but couldnt find a commission to communicate without returning to violence. So Carson using language and punctuation to catch up with the conflict is effective. He struggles to communicate I was trying to complete a sentence in my head, but it kept stuttering. This metaphor gets across the laboured of gunfire and the speakers struggle t o express and communicate the chaos of the situation. It could even be a metaphor for the Troubles themselves.In the same centering as Carson, Hughes lands the reader right in the middle of the action, beginning the verse with Suddenly which creates the same blunt, startled effect that the spend himself must have felt as he began his bayonet charge. By keeping the soldier anonymous, Hughes makes it seem as if this experience was universal among soldiers who fought in the First area War. He was not a soldier poet himself, unlike Owen, so the healthy images he uses conjure up the energy and physicality and terror the soldier feels. The simile sweating like molten iron from the centre of his vanity describes vividly the heat and intensity of pounding through shot cut furrows charging at the enemy and facing death. Ironically, any bullet which may push down the soldier would also cut through his flesh but from away his body, so this molten iron coming from his insides create s an awkward parallel which makes us think of the death he is facing.Both poets use enjambed lines, but Carsons poetry is more chaotic and stuttering because of the caesuras in it, whereas Hughess is more fluid. Carson breaks up his lines and has a mixture of short and long lines because they represent the streets being blocked as he tries to get down them. Although Hughes uses caesuras too, the effect is different. Because Carson is using punctuation as a metaphor you notice it more and it is more powerful, whereas in Hughess poem the caesuras make it more narrative. Also, the caesuras in Hughess poem are disguised because the stanzas a re more regular.Neither of the poems use any rhyme. Rhyme can sometimes suggest harmony as the sounds match, but Carson is trying to stress the division in the city and the blunt, war-ridden and violent events. In Hughess poem the lack of rhyme is maybe because the man has just jumped up and is running in a nonplus way, so again, rhyming would b e too neat and ordered to efficaciously convey this chaotic and panicked experience.