Exploring Ted Hughes’ ‘Six Young Men’
‘Six Young Men’ stands out as one of the most compelling poems in Ted Hughes’ debut collection, The Hawk in the Rain (1957). This poignant piece can be categorized in various ways: it serves as a war poem, an ekphrastic poem that contemplates art and photography, and a historical reflection, particularly considering that Hughes penned the poem in the mid-1950s, almost four decades after the First World War had ended.
While the war’s memory lived on for some, including Hughes’ father, William, who fought valiantly at Gallipoli and was among the mere seventeen survivors from his regiment, Ted Hughes himself was born in 1930, a full twelve years after the war concluded.
Summary
The poem unfolds a vivid description of an old photograph featuring six young men just before the eruption of the First World War in 1914. Despite the forty years that have passed since the snapshot was captured, the faces and hands of these young men retain their smooth, youthful appearance. Yet, hauntingly, we learn that merely six months after this moment was immortalized, all six men would meet their untimely deaths.
Time has not altered the natural world depicted in the photograph; the valley remains unchanged, echoing with the same sounds and sights as it did during the young men’s lifetimes. However, these men have long since departed, their fates sealed in battles fought or left unknown—many were reported missing in action. The poem poignantly notes that no one truly knows what became of several of these brave souls, save for the grim truth that they were all ‘killed.’
The photograph serves as the ‘one place’ that keeps their memory alive, their youthful faces captured in their Sunday best. It poignantly asserts that nobody encountered in our daily lives is ‘more alive’ than the men in this photograph. At the same time, they are as dead as the prehistoric creatures that perished eons ago. This duality is striking: they exist in a liminal space, both as alive as anything that currently breathes and as dead as anything that has long since faded from existence.
The speaker reflects on this paradox, acknowledging that such contradictory thoughts can drive one to madness. It forces us to confront our own mortality and the tragic fates of these young men, who were so cruelly cut down in the prime of their lives.
Analysis
‘Six Young Men’ is part of a broader collection of poems about the First World War that Hughes included in The Hawk in the Rain, with another notable work being ‘Bayonet Charge.’ Throughout his career, war remained a significant theme for Hughes, culminating in his later poem ‘Platform One’ in 1996.
Born in 1930, Hughes missed the opportunity to experience the Great War firsthand and was too young to serve in the Second World War. Nonetheless, he grew up in Yorkshire, surrounded by the haunting tales of war recounted by relatives, friends, and neighbors. Some accounts suggest that his father shared stories from the war with his children as bedtime tales, despite Hughes’ later assertions to the contrary.
This oral history became Hughes’ avenue to understanding the Great War, a conflict that was already being mythologized as a critical chapter in national history during his formative years in the 1930s and 1940s. His engagement with this historical event is further manifested through the lens of visual art—specifically, a photograph.
Ekphrastic poems, which explore visual art, can be found in various forms. Thus, ‘Six Young Men’ serves as an ekphrastic piece, where the human cost of war is accessed through a photograph immortalizing men who lost their lives early in the conflict.
Contradictory Nature of Memory
The final stanza of ‘Six Young Men’ presents a striking paradox: through the lens of the photograph, which captures the six young men at the height of their youth just before their tragic deaths, they appear as vibrant as anyone still alive today. The photograph immortalizes them, serving as a powerful reminder of the tangible human sacrifice that the war exacted. These men, who died shortly after the photograph was taken, were volunteers who enlisted willingly, rather than conscripts compelled by law.
While the photograph captures their vitality, it simultaneously evokes the horrific reality of their abrupt and violent deaths, rendering them as dead as anything that is no longer living. This curious paradox invites readers to engage in cognitive dissonance as they grapple with the realities of life and death.
It’s noteworthy how the language of photography intertwines with the poem’s themes: the term ‘shot’ resonates with both the manner of death suffered by one of the men and the act of capturing the image; ‘flash’ can refer to both the flash of a bomb and the camera; and ‘exposure’ is a term that intriguingly connects to Wilfred Owen’s poem about the war.
Form and Structure
Ted Hughes often employed pararhyme (also known as slant rhyme or half-rhyme) in his poetry rather than opting for full rhyme or free verse. His works frequently exhibit a delicate interplay between consonant and vowel sounds. In ‘Six Young Men,’ we can observe instances such as ‘friends’ resonating with ‘hands,’ ‘pride’ aligning with ‘dead,’ and a triad formed by ‘fashionable,’ ‘smile,’ and ‘bashful.’ These examples are just from the opening stanza, with many more throughout the poem.
This use of pararhyme—akin to Wilfred Owen’s war poetry—eschews the neatness of full rhyme, which might seem too simplistic for a subject as profound as the mass industrial warfare that claimed countless lives. Furthermore, it’s essential to recognize that the 1950s was a time when the Great War was still fresh in the memories of many, including Hughes’ father and uncle.
Another thought-provoking ekphrastic poem about a photograph depicting men on the brink of the First World War emerged just a few years after Hughes wrote ‘Six Young Men.’ The author, Philip Larkin, presents a vastly different poetic voice and perspective. While both poems share notable similarities, their conclusions diverge significantly, offering fruitful ground for comparative analysis.