This poem is my favorite of the three poems we have studied because of the beautiful language and poetic techniques it employs, and because of how realistically it portrays war. The poem captures the horror of troops caught in the middle of a brutal and merciless war, and their desperation. In a mechanized war, attacks take place with frightening speed and intensity, where there is no place to run or hide, and any response is not made out of logic but of pure fear. This hasty and irrational way of thinking fueled only by terror typically only ended in death for both the attacker and the defender, and severe trauma for any survivors. Using a series of present continuous verbs, the poet depicts fast evolving action. He portrays the realness …show more content…
The verb “creeping” creates a very disquitening feeling and personifies the tanks as monsters, an eerie thought. This combined with the verb topple feels very disturbing as it gives us the image of these monsterous tanks slowly sneaking towards soldiers, their prey. The movement of the poem suddenly increases on the sixth line with the words “The barrage roars and lifts”. the onomotopoeia “roars” suggests sudden movement, action, maybe even disarray, and this quickens and intensifies the poem, finally instigating action. The verbs lift further adds to this effect. Line six continues onto seven and eight with the illiterative words “Then clumsily bowed with bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear, men jostle and climb to, meet the bristling fire.” I find that these short few lines are filled with many, many beautiful poetic tecniques. Firstly I immediately see the illiteration in “bowed” “bombed” “battle gear” and “bristling”. This illiteration, especially with plosive letters, just compounds the suffering and misery of the soldiers, and the brutal, aggressive nature of war. Furthermore, the repition of the word “and” just accentuates the heaviness of the huge burden they are forced to carry. In the eigth line the word “bristle” is very aggressive, as if the men are running to their own destruction. I find the symbolism in these few …show more content…
Hope is personified as a dying soldier, hiding from the other soldiers, and desperately struggling, trying to grasp onto the mud, but miserably failing. Hope is described and “floundering” in the mud, sinking, drowning, hope itself fighting a losing battle just to survive in the hearts of the soldiers. But the soldiers all know that hope is lost and dead, and woefully plea “O! Jesus, make it stop”. The impassioned “O!” symbolizes the terror and pain they are enduring, and this line captures the desperation of these poor soldiers as they try cling onto life, onto their
In this free-verse war poem, the idea of 'journey' extends itself to cover both the physical and emotional aspects of the subject matter of the poem. Repetition and word
War is a scandalous topic where peoples’ views differ as to what war is. Some people see it as pure evil and wicked while others think that it is brave and noble of what soldiers do. Looking at poems which had been written by people affected by war help show the messages which are portrayed. The two sets of poems which show different views of war as well as some similarities are “the Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars” by Richard Lovelace and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, “The Song of the Mud” by Mary Borden. Both these poets use linguistic devices to convince the reader of their view of what the war is. Tennyson and Lovelace show how war is worthy
Imagery techniques in this poem consist of key words, an example is “They’re rolling them out of the deep-freeze locker on the tarmac” this gives the readers an image of dead bodies being rolled out of an aeroplane onto the runway. By using a visual approach in the poem, the poet can better express his feelings on war to the reader(s).
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell is able to accomplish so many thing with so little lines-mainly through the use of metaphor and diction. It explains the terrors of wars in gruesome detail and explains the ways in which wars, in a sense “breed” and “birth” death. To some, this poem is seen as the ultimate poem of war, and rightly
The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.
In the second stanza the distinctive experience of power is present. The use of the technique of imagery and emotive words “to pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows’ tells us that the soldiers were strong, loyal and had enough power within a degree to assist fellow soldiers. The use of personification to create sound “sob and clubbing of the gunfire” This leads the audience to understand what the soldiers were up against without even directly saying it. The imagery visually shows the scene in their
Weigl has dug deep into his recollection of the war to produce work that can be thought of as artistically beautiful. It’s his aim to find the means, despite everything he’s endured, to transcend misery in his poetry. This is done on purpose and allows Weigl to employ a style in his poetry that’s dependent on the sound of words, to express an image so openly that the verses depict a genuine emotion that doesn’t pose as an insult to readers. Underneath the rubble of his misfortune there is a level of integrity on display that readers can appreciate. Weigl likes to view the world objectively and so does his poetry in a very responsible and accountable manner.
The speaker is somebody sharing their thoughts about soldiers and people fighting their own battles and their willingness. The speaker’s point of view is in the first person. The speaker shows an intellectual perspective of sympathy and appreciation for soldiers. The voice and perspective explains a world in which the
Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the
causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely
This poem describes the feelings that the speaker felt back when he was in WW1 and how he feels in present time. One of the memory's that still haunts him in present time is gas attacks. He suffered when he was fighting in war and now he is suffering from the traumatizing memories. Patriotism is also talked about multiple times in this poem. Throughout the poem, the speaker talks about war so much that it becomes surreal.
This text is based on the experience of a soldier at war, how he sees fellow soldiers, brothers dying in front of him, the soldiers emotions and the horrors of toxic gas bombs suffocating the people around him, it shows how they are a part of a brotherhood because they are all marching on through the toxic wasteland together helping and supporting each other. The text displays a great picture for the reader on what horrors the soldier is viewing when it says ‘Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning”, this shows us that people are dying around him from the thick toxic gas. “Hero of war by Rise against” is similar to this poem because both texts are anti war and they portray soldiers as being brainwashed and psychologically damaged/post traumatic stress disorder, this causing pain and suffering of the victims of war and even the family’s and society when the soldiers return
Owen’s poem has the clear intention of showing the true nature of war to the reader, which is mainly achieved by contrasting reality against the ways in which war is so
When faced with the countless problems of war including death, disease, sorrow, and loss, soldiers develop and intense bond between one another as they seek support in one another. A brotherhood is formed among these soldiers who rely on one another for protection and companionship amid a time in their lives where they are faced with the constant threat of death and violence everyday of their lives. But what happens to them after the war? In After the War, poet brings awareness to how the war-torn soldier attempts to reestablish their self in a society they have been isolated from for so many years through use of free verse and repetitive phrases, which further reinforces the theme throughout the poem.
The second stanza speaks of how it so often slips our mind that war does not only affect the men who are in direct combat. The young women too, suffer greatly in silence. Though so removed from the grime and blood of the battlefield, one cannot imagine the excruciating pain of having to part with their loved ones, with the knowledge that 'the holy glimmers of goodbyes ' might as well be goodbye forever. Every moment of the day, they agonize over the terrifying thought that their loved one has been shot or injured. There is no way of telling - and the guessing game is exhausting. There is no more joy or excitement in life as each 'slow dusk ' drags by, their only reason for existence condensed into a single purpose - receiving news from the battlefield. Often time, their agonizing wait ends in a heartbreaking death. This is signified from the line 'the drawing down of blinds '.