AQA Poems
Compare how poets present the effects of war in ‘Mametz Wood’ (page 36) and in one other poem from Conflict.
In Mametz Wood, by Owen Sheers and Futility, by Wilfred Owen, their separate perspectives of conflict and war are shown throughout, with the use of imagery, and personification to show the poets’ changes in emotion. Owen Sheers wrote his poem in the perspective of what happened in the past, with the poem being influenced by Sheers seeing a picture of a mass grave, provoking gruesome images. Futility is written in the present tense, as Owen himself had war experience, and the perspective is of how aimless war is.
Heavy imagery is utilised in Mametz Wood to describe the method and way in which the bones that have been dug up after one hundred years, were buried. Owen Sheers describes the remnants of the soldiers as a mere ‘broken bird’s egg of a skull’ and as a ‘broken mosaic of bone’. The repeated word ‘broken’ could be metaphorical for the way in which the dead soldiers wives or partners’ hearts were broken with the realisation of their partner’s deaths, or it could signify Sheers’ views of war as damaging and degrading. The fact that the poet describes the skulls as that of a ‘broken bird’s egg’, implies how fragile a life can be, not just the actual, disturbing image of a crushed ‘skull’. In contrast to the effect of the above quotes, Sheers’ use of a ‘mosaic of bone linked arm in arm’ suggests that behind all the aggression and unsettling image, lies the still remaining unity of the soldiers, unlike the ‘boots that outlasted them’. In the line ‘their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre’, the verb ‘dance’ is normally considered to have positive associations, however this is opposed by the word ‘macabre’, intensifying the gruesome image of the soldiers’ grave.
On the other hand, in Futility, Wilfred Owen’s simple, but powerful imagery is used to show Owen’s futile perspective of conflict. The employment of the ‘sun’ to give the soldier life, suggests the metaphorical hope of the ‘sun’ as almost godlike, giving life, but in this case it is pointless. Owen’s futile vision of conflict is emphasised in the second line of the first stanza. The word ‘awoke’ suggests how the ‘sun’ used to wake the dying comrade, but that was ‘once’, and now there is no hope, as the ‘sun’ does not ‘rouse him now’. ‘Whispering of fields unsown’ is an ambiguous clause, connoting not only the barren fields left behind in England, because of the soldier’s absence, but also the future now denied to this young man, who has become an innocent victim of conflict. ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ could be a reference to the Biblical nature of God creating man from ‘clay’. This could again imply the thwarted attempt of ceasing war and rousing the soldier, because the hope of a miracle like God’s creation of man from ‘clay’ is impossible.
Mametz Wood is twenty-one lines, structured in one long stanza, divided into four sections. The first nine lines describes how the farmers have been unearthing pieces of bone for many years. The second line is cut off from the first emphasising the way the ‘young[s]’ lives were ‘wasted’. The separate descriptions and images of the bones and remnants are also separated into different lines, almost being metaphorical for the way the bones are scattered. In the next three lines the poet’s voice is heard, reflecting on the way discoveries are still being made that bring the past into the present. All three lines are combined in enjambement, mirroring what the words say – ‘reaching back into itself for reminders’. Although in free verse, there are two examples of half rhyme in the poem. Lines eight and nine close the first section with an almost rhyming couplet; ‘run’ and ‘guns’. At the end of the poem lines nineteen and twenty-one finish with ‘sung’ and ‘tongues’, and this gives a feeling of finality to the poem, perhaps finality to war and conflict.
Futility is written in fourteen lines, with some of the features of a traditional sonnet, but instead of eight lines followed by six, it is divided into two seven-line stanzas. Like Mametz Wood the poem is very much of irregularity. The persona is shocked and full of despair throughout the poem, and therefore the irregularity and lack of rhythm could imply the lack of hope for the persona and instead his confusion. Unlike Mametz Wood, the rhythm does become more controlled, with stronger iambic metre after the first four lines. It is as if the urgency of the moment and the initial faith in the sun’s power to revive the fallen comrade needs a rushed chaotic rhythm. As the realisation sets in to the narrator that the ‘sun’ has no power over death, the rhythm becomes more steady and somber. This could denote a similar hope for the finality of war and conflict as Owen Sheers’ poem.
Although both poets explore the theme of conflict from different times, so may have different factors influencing their style and vision of war, they both emphasise the senselessness of disputes and their hope for the finality of war. Throughout Mametz Wood and Futility both Owen Sheers and Wilfred Owen use powerful, symbolic imagery to provoke gruesome, disturbing images, with Sheers describing it from the perspective from the future looking into the past, and Owen’s persona from personal war experience. Sheers’ poem is mainly of irregular structure, suggesting the way the Battle of the Somme has interrupted the Welsh soldiers’ futures, while Owen’s poem does change from the irregular structure to show the narrator’s confusion, to a rhythmic tone. This is during the narrator’s realisation of the unlikelihood of bringing his fellow soldier back to life, and the rhythm shows a sudden change and control in Owen’s emotions, to a sombre, solemn atmosphere.
Compare how poets present bravery in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (page 43) and in one other poem from conflict.
The Charge of the Light Brigade was written before the 19th century and gave the poets view of war. The poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Crimean War. The War was also significant as an early example of work of modern war correspondents. Bayonet Charge describes a charge during a war using one soldier to speak for all.
Lord Tennyson utilizes a lot of repetition in his imagery to portray a battle scene. From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is thrown into the action. The six hundred cavalry are ordered to ‘Charge for the guns’ by an unnamed ‘he’. Not a single soldier was discouraged or distressed by the command to charge forward, even though all the soldiers realized that their commander had made a terrible mistake: ‘Someone had blundered.’ The role of the soldier is to obey and ‘not to make reply...not to reason why,’ so they followed orders and rode into the “valley of death.”. They are being asked to sacrifice themselves by charging into blazing gunfire, and they follow rules without question because of their sense of loyalty and duty. They ride well, but their swords are useless against the Russian gunfire from both sides, with ‘cannon to right of them’ and ‘cannon to left of them’. Cannons behind and on both sides of the soldiers now assaulted them with shots and shells. As the brigade rode ‘back from the mouth of hell,’ soldiers and horses collapsed; few remained to make the journey back.
Hughes constructs the poem with interesting varieties of imagery, which provoke vivid images in the mind. His word choice also describes how the soldier is feeling in each stanza. Bayonet Charge is a remarkable poem because both the physical and mental sides of an individual are mentioned frequently throughout the poem. Bayonet Charge is about a patriotic soldier fighting in a battle for his country. The poem depicts bravery through the narration of one soldier during a bayonet charge. Ted Hughes imagines the soldier questioning his individual role in the war and why he continues to run towards such danger. This is unlike The Charge of the Light Brigade as the soldier doubts the war, instead of walking into it just to show patriotism. In Bayonet Charge it is as though the soldier has been frozen in time for a second. Suddenly a ‘hare’, caught in the firing, dies violently, and then he realises he has to continue forwards with ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera/Dropped’. Instead the soldier simply ‘runs’ to escape the terror of the ‘blue crackling air’ and the fate of the ‘hare’.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is comprised of six numbered stanzas varying in length from six to eleven lines. The longest stanza is the fourth, which describes the valiant attempt of the outnumbered cavalry to charge a line of guns and a waiting enemy army. The shortest and final stanza addresses the reader, asking them to wonder at such patriotic obedience. Perhaps this shows that Alfred Lord Tennyson himself disagrees with the loyalty shown by the ‘six hundred’. The shortness of the last stanza echoes the brevity of the young ‘noble’ lives lost. Tennyson uses a dactylic metre to give the effect of the cavalry charge, with the poem’s galloping rhythm when read aloud. This metre causes the emphasis of parts of the words, ‘boldly’ and ‘honour’. This could be to stress the significance in the soldiers’ bravery in the fight for their cause, despite the fact that ‘someone had blunder’d’.
In Bayonet Charge, the poem is written in free verse consisting of three stanzas. The poem is almost split into sections, with the first stanza, eight lines in length describing the situation. The second stanza halts for a moment to explore the soldier’s bewilderment at his fellow soldiers still being patriotic despite the certainty of death. The final verse explains the soldier’s realisation concluding from the previous stanza, that he has to keep moving for the chance of survival. Hughes uses continuous enjambement throughout the poem, to signify the persona’s confusion at the other soldiers’ patriotism, which is backed up by the use of one rhetorical question – ‘was he the hand pointing that second?’ Here the persona is yet again questioning war, and asking himself why he is there, suggesting his distaste in war obedience.
In conclusion, I think that although both poets do convey the bravery shown by the soldiers in the battles in which they are part of, in Bayonet Charge, Ted Hughes’ persona from an upfront view, questions the stupidity even, in the obedience his fellow army members. On the other hand, in The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson states that the reader should admire what the soldiers have done for our nation.
Compare how poets use language to present strong feelings in ‘Poppies’ and one other poem from conflict.
Poppies by Jane Weir describes in first person, of a mother grieving for the loss of her soldier son, in the days before Armistice Sunday. She reflects on a time when she had pinned a poppy on her growing son’s lapel before he dashed out of the house. The persona finds herself drawn to the war memorial in the churchyard and longs to hear her dead son’s voice again. The Right Word by Imtiaz Dharker is also in first person. The narrator examines the word ‘terrorist’ from different points of view, moving through other options of the names for people who are involved in violence. Nearer the end of the poem, the persona acknowledges the labeling of a person as a ‘terrorist’ and discovers the true personality behind the word.
The dramatic monologue of Poppies seems to be an elegy, where the mother’s memory takes her on a journey. The idea of the poppy, a symbol of remembrance for the war dead, reminds her of a memorable time in the past. The raconteur experiences feelings of loss when she visits her son’s empty bedroom. Here time blurs as not only would she have missed her schoolboy son, leaping ‘intoxicated’ into his future, but also many times, since his death, she will have visited his room. The mother states that she ‘released a song bird from its cage’ and this could symbolise her wish for her voice and her ‘song’ to reach her son in heaven. The narrative moves on to the churchyard led by another symbol – ‘a single dove’ – to a war memorial. This implies a record of the sacrifice made by the many young men in the past conflicts, most of whom would have mothers in the same position as the persona. The fact that the symbol is of a ‘single dove’ suggests the mother’s feelings towards her ‘single’ son as part of the whole conflict, portraying deep feelings for the frail, immature young boy.
Poppies explores the effects of conflict when grief is brought into the home and experienced on the domestic front. The language of maternal caring intermingles with the language of the battlefield. The poppy brooch is described with the imagery of conflict. The metaphor, ‘spasms of paper red’ could denote splatters of blood, perhaps also the sharp, painful agonies of those affected by war. The personality removes the cat hairs, in the way a female notices detail, the ‘sellotape bandaged around (her) hand’. There is a sense of anxiety, as the child has to be prepared for the experience of school or the conflicts of the outside world. The cat hairs suggest the marking out of territory – the home, security and ultimate safety – whereas ‘bandaged’ reinforces the fear of harm, whether from serious injury or everyday knocks. There is a strong sense of the mother wanting to protect and heal.
Imtiaz Dharker relies heavily on repetition to get her main point across in The Right Word. Dharker plays with the first line ‘Outside the door’ throughout the poem. A door is a means of access; metaphorically, it is a barrier. In the first stanza she is afraid of the terrorist ‘lurking’ ominously. The door then becomes ‘that door’ and in stanza four, ‘your door’. The persona gradually brings the reader into her dilemma, inviting us to question what is ‘the right word’.
Compare how poets show attitudes to war in ‘Futility’ and one other poem from Conflict.
In Mametz Wood, by Owen Sheers and Futility, by Wilfred Owen, their separate perspectives of conflict and war are shown throughout, with the use of imagery, and personification to show the poets’ changes in emotion. Owen Sheers wrote his poem in the perspective of what happened in the past, with the poem being influenced by Sheers seeing a picture of a mass grave, provoking gruesome images. Futility is written in the present tense, as Owen himself had war experience, and the perspective is of how aimless war is.
In Futility, Wilfred Owen’s simple, but powerful imagery is used to show Owen’s futile perspective of conflict. The employment of the ‘sun’ to give the soldier life, suggests the metaphorical hope of the ‘sun’ as almost godlike, giving life, but in this case it is pointless. Owen’s futile vision of conflict is emphasised in the second line of the first stanza. The word ‘awoke’ suggests how the ‘sun’ used to wake the dying comrade, but that was ‘once’, and now there is no hope, as the ‘sun’ does not ‘rouse him now’. ‘Whispering of fields unsown’ is an ambiguous clause, connoting not only the barren fields left behind in England, because of the soldier’s absence, but also the future now denied to this young man, who has become an innocent victim of conflict. ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ could be a reference to the Biblical nature of God creating man from ‘clay’. This could again imply the thwarted attempt of ceasing war and rousing the soldier, because the hope of a miracle like God’s creation of man from ‘clay’ is impossible.
On the other hand, heavy imagery is utilised in Mametz Wood to describe the method and way in which the bones that have been dug up after one hundred years, were buried. Owen Sheers describes the remnants of the soldiers as a mere ‘broken bird’s egg of a skull’ and as a ‘broken mosaic of bone’. The repeated word ‘broken’ could be metaphorical for the way in which the dead soldiers wives or partners’ hearts were broken with the realisation of their partner’s deaths, or it could signify Sheers’ views of war as damaging and degrading. The fact that the poet describes the skulls as that of a ‘broken bird’s egg’, implies how fragile a life can be, not just the actual, disturbing image of a crushed ‘skull’. In contrast to the effect of the above quotes, Sheers’ use of a ‘mosaic of bone linked arm in arm’ suggests that behind all the aggression and unsettling image, lies the still remaining unity of the soldiers, unlike the ‘boots that outlasted them’. In the line ‘their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre’, the verb ‘dance’ is normally considered to have positive associations, however this is opposed by the word ‘macabre’, intensifying the gruesome image of the soldiers’ grave.
Futility is written in fourteen lines, with some of the features of a traditional sonnet, but instead of eight lines followed by six, it is divided into two seven-line stanzas. Like Mametz Wood the poem is very much of irregularity. The persona is shocked and full of despair throughout the poem, and therefore the irregularity and lack of rhythm could imply the lack of hope for the persona and instead his confusion. Unlike Mametz Wood, the rhythm does become more controlled, with stronger iambic metre after the first four lines. It is as if the urgency of the moment and the initial faith in the sun’s power to revive the fallen comrade needs a rushed chaotic rhythm. As the realisation sets in to the narrator that the ‘sun’ has no power over death, the rhythm becomes more steady and somber. This could denote a similar hope for the finality of war and conflict as Owen Sheers’ poem.
Mametz Wood is twenty-one lines, structured in one long stanza, divided into four sections. The first nine lines describe how the farmers have been unearthing pieces of bone for many years. The second line is cut off from the first emphasising the way the ‘young[s]’ lives were ‘wasted’. The separate descriptions and images of the bones and remnants are also separated into different lines, almost being metaphorical for the way the bones are scattered. In the next three lines the poet’s voice is heard, reflecting on the way discoveries are still being made that bring the past into the present. All three lines are combined in enjambement, mirroring what the words say – ‘reaching back into itself for reminders’. Although in free verse, there are two examples of half rhyme in the poem. Lines eight and nine close the first section with an almost rhyming couplet; ‘run’ and ‘guns’. At the end of the poem lines nineteen and twenty-one finish with ‘sung’ and ‘tongues’, and this gives a feeling of finality to the poem, perhaps finality to war and conflict.
Although both poets explore the theme of conflict from different times, so may have different factors influencing their style and vision of war, they both emphasise the senselessness of disputes and their hope for the finality of war. Throughout Mametz Wood and Futility both Owen Sheers and Wilfred Owen use powerful, symbolic imagery to provoke gruesome, disturbing images, with Sheers describing it from the perspective from the future looking into the past, and Owen’s persona from personal war experience. Sheers’ poem is mainly of irregular structure, suggesting the way the Battle of the Somme has interrupted the Welsh soldiers’ futures, while Owen’s poem does change from the irregular structure to show the narrator’s confusion, to a rhythmic tone. This is during the narrator’s realisation of the unlikelihood of bringing his fellow soldier back to life, and the rhythm shows a sudden change and control in Owen’s emotions, to a sombre, solemn atmosphere.
Compare how poets use language to present strong feelings in ‘Poppies’ (page 41) and one other poem from Conflict.
In the two poems Poppies and The right word language is used to present strong feelings. Poppies is about a mother whose son is off to war and her memories of him as a child.
Jane Weir uses language to show her worry and melancholy about her son who is leaving to go to war. This is first shown to us in the first stanza after talking about poppies being placed on war graves - ‘Before you left/I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals/spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade/of yellow bias binding around your blazer.’ What the poet says is significant because she is remembering exactly what she did that day all those years ago in vivid detail. This I think is because this is the day he leaves to go to war and this stands out a lot to her and she shows her emotion when it says ‘All my words/flattened, rolled, turned into felt/ slowly melting.’ Poppies is written as a dramatic monologue, acting as an elegy, where the mother’s memory takes her on a journey. The idea of the poppy, a symbol of remembrance for the war dead, reminds the narrator of the time she pinned a poppy on her son’s blazer. The persona appears to experience feelings of loss when she visits her son’s empty bedroom. Here in the poem, time seems to blend together. Not only would the mother have missed her schoolboy son, leaping ‘intoxicated’ into his future, but also many times since his death, she will have visited his chamber. I think that the ‘released… song bird’ could symbolise the mother’s emotional sense of release once her child has left the house.
The narrative progresses to the churchyard, led by another symbol – ‘a single dove’ – to a war memorial, a record of the sacrifice made by many young men in past conflicts, most of whom would have had grieving mothers. War is harsh and brutal and many poems are written from the point of view of the soldiers, and those engaged in war, but Poppies looks at the effects of conflict when grief is brought into the home and experienced on the domestic front. The language of maternal caring intermingles with the language of the battlefield. The poppy is described with the imagery of conflict. The metaphor ‘spasms of paper red’ could denote splatters of blood, perhaps also the sharp, painful agonies of those affected by the conflict. The bright red poppy contrasts with ‘a blockade/of yellow bias binding’. The military metaphor prevents the escape of the raw edge under the binding: the young child has to grow up, the young man is sent into battle without life’s experiences. The narrator checks out her son’s school uniform in the way a soldier’s kit would be routinely expected. However, she smooths down the ‘shirt’s/upturned collar’ in a loving manner. The mother removes the cat hairs, in the way a female notices detail, the ‘sellotape bandaged around [her] hand’. Here there is the sense of anxiety, as the child has to be prepared for life at school or the conflicts of the outside world. The cat hairs could suggest the marking out of territory – the home, security and ultimately safety – whereas ‘bandaged’ reinforces the fear of harm, whether from serious injury of everyday knocks. The reader can tell that the mother knows her responsibility of protecting and healing.
The right word by Imtiaz Dharker, examines the word ‘terrorist’ from different points of view, moving through other optional names for people who are involved in violence.
Dharker relies heavily on repetition to make her point of view prevail. She manipulates the first line ‘Outside the door’ throughout the poem. A door is a means of access; metaphorically, it is a barrier. In the first stanza the narrator is afraid of the terrorist ‘lurking’ ominously. The door then becomes ‘that door’ and in stanza four ‘your door’. The poet gradually beckons the reader into her dilemma, inviting us to question what is ‘the right word’. ‘Shadows’, suggesting a dark area where fears and doubts hide, is also repeated in the first six stanzas. We are frightened of terrorist acts in our own country. But in the poem, the terrorist is only a ‘boy’ who is left when the ‘shadows’ disappear. The ‘boy’ has to be invited in, where he becomes ‘the child’. The narrator also shows uncomfortable feelings in her descriptions – ‘too hard’ and ‘too steady’, are descriptions of somebody confident and unwavering in his convictions, causing an awkward relationship to be portrayed between the mother and her son. ‘Is that the wrong description?’ the poet asks, drawing the reader into the poem, and ‘I haven’t got this right’ gives an air of immediacy. The persona concludes the poem by insisting that we think cautiously about our easy use of the word ‘terrorist’ when she writes ‘outside your door’, and ‘a boy who looks like your son, too’.
Overall, both Jane Weir and Imtiaz Dharker use vivid, emotional language to convey the feelings of worry, loneliness and love. Weir explores a mother’s loss of her son, from domestic first-hand experience, whilst Dharker investigates the wrong use of a word to describe someone of whom is closer to you than one can imagine.
Compare how poets present the effects of conflict in Belfast Confetti (page 40) and one other poem from Conflict.
Belfast Confetti is a poem written in first person, giving a dramatic description of what it felt like to be caught up in the violent riots in Belfast in the 1970s. The yellow palm describes the poet’s experiences when he was walking through Baghdad in 1998.
Ciaran Carson in Belfast Confetti explores the aftermath of an IRA bombing, where there is chaos and the ‘riot squad’ moves in. In the narrator’s confusion and terror, the poet cannot find his way through the maze of Belfast streets that he usually knows so well. The immediate impact of the bombing is shown when the persona is stopped and interrogated by British soldiers, but he is unable to communicate with them, to answer their straightforward questions. This emphasises the panic and confusion caused by violence; nothing appears to make sense to the poet any more. Belfast Confetti is full of structure that stimulates an effect of war. Just as the poet feels out of control, so the sentences are erratic. Near the central section of the poem, Carson’s language stops and starts, whether because of ‘a burst of rapid fire…’ or because he repeatedly loses his way and has to turn back: ‘Dead end again’. Furthermore, regular use of enjambement effectively throws emphasis on single words like ‘explosion’ and ‘stuttering’, and the natural break at the end of line sixteen, where the speaker seems to stop mid-question, stresses the confused state, when inhuman masked figures impede his progress.
The title Belfast Confetti could be a euphemism for miscellaneous objects that were thrown during street riots: ‘nuts, bolts, nails, car keys’, and even tin cans. The irony is shown of conflict here. ‘Nuts’ and ‘bolts’ are usually utilised to hold things together, but instead in war they are used to hurt and alienate others, doing the almost opposite – tearing things apart. Moreover, ‘confetti’ is usually thrown over a new bride and groom to celebrate a happy union, but here small pieces of metal are hurled to break up relationships and create discord. Nearer the end of the poem Carson uses questions in a list form, not only to suggest confusion, but they inform the reader of how routine conflict is in Belfast, and also of the standard, impersonal questions the soldiers ask. The disturbed individual, lost in his own city, seems unable to answer. Punctuation is the way humans make sense of language. It tells us when to pause, stop and resume again. Too little punctuation causes confusion, whilst too much results in short, chaotic sentences. The speaker in the poem is caught up in a violent bout of street fighting and cannot ‘complete a sentence in his head’. Carson skillfully weaves most types of punctuation marks into the poem. ‘A burst of rapid fire’ is followed by an ellipsis, a mark showing something has been missed out, or there is no more to follow. This adds to the turmoil-taking place. Visual tricks are played; ‘an asterisk’ on the map looks as though there has been an explosion on the paper. This is followed by a ‘hyphenated line’ – which links the explosion to bullets ricocheting around the persona. The constant change in the poem’s line lengths, emphasises how unaware the poet is of his whereabouts and this develops the bewilderment of the situation.
Each stanza of The yellow palm contains a contrast in moods – beauty conflicts with violence, and the result is disturbing. The ‘lilac stems’, symbols of early love and mourning, make an idyllic picture, but the detail that the dead man has been prematurely and cruelly killed by breathing in poisonous gas distorts the image. ‘The golden mosque’ is a magnificent building built for worship and tranquility, but an unexpected violent attack has brought the violence of war into the worshippers’ daily lives. The fresh smell of the Tigris cannot compete with the cruel relentless heat – even the sun is personified in war-related terms: ‘barbarian’ and ‘armistice’. This bathos portrays how great the effect of conflict actually is, almost completely turning an idyllic scene on its head. Minhinnick uses colour to make the stark contrasts in the poem even more vivid. ‘Lilac stems’, ‘golden mosque’ and ‘yellow dates’ are vibrant colours, but they are quickly dulled by the ‘black dinars’ and the menacing ‘silver caravan’. The alliterative ‘s’ sound is made use of efficaciously in stanza five, where the Cruise missile’s flight, close to the Baghdad streets, is frighteningly described. The sustained ‘s’ sound and repeated word ‘slow’ make the shiny flying bomb sound dauntingly sinister, yet, when used in the final line of the stanza – ‘and blessed it with a smile’ – the sibilant ‘s’ transforms the sombre mood, to one of hope of forgetting the past violence and looking forward to a brighter future. Once again fear and beauty co-exist.
Compare how poets present the experience of soldiers in Bayonet Charge and one other poem from Conflict.
Bayonet Charge describes a charge during a war using one soldier to speak for all. The Charge of the Light Brigade was written before the 19th century and gave the poets view of war. The poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Crimean War. The War was also significant as an early example of work of modern war correspondents.
Hughes constructs the poem with interesting varieties of imagery, which provoke vivid images in the mind. His word choice also describes how the soldier is feeling in each stanza. Bayonet Charge is a remarkable poem because both the physical and mental sides of an individual are mentioned frequently throughout the poem. Bayonet Charge is about a patriotic soldier fighting in a battle for his country. The poem depicts bravery through the narration of one soldier during a bayonet charge. Ted Hughes imagines the soldier questioning his individual role in the war and why he continues to run towards such danger. This is unlike The Charge of the Light Brigade as the soldier doubts the war, instead of walking into it just to show patriotism. In Bayonet Charge it is as though the soldier has been frozen in time for a second. Suddenly a ‘hare’, caught in the firing, dies violently, and then he realises he has to continue forwards with ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera/Dropped’. Instead the soldier simply ‘runs’ to escape the terror of the ‘blue crackling air’ and the fate of the ‘hare’.
Lord Tennyson utilizes a lot of repetition in his imagery to portray a battle scene. From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is thrown into the action. The six hundred cavalry are ordered to ‘Charge for the guns’ by an unnamed ‘he’. Not a single soldier was discouraged or distressed by the command to charge forward, even though all the soldiers realized that their commander had made a terrible mistake: ‘Someone had blundered.’ The role of the soldier is to obey and ‘not to make reply...not to reason why,’ so they followed orders and rode into the “valley of death.”. They are being asked to sacrifice themselves by charging into blazing gunfire, and they follow rules without question because of their sense of loyalty and duty. They ride well, but their swords are useless against the Russian gunfire from both sides, with ‘cannon to right of them’ and ‘cannon to left of them’. Cannons behind and on both sides of the soldiers now assaulted them with shots and shells. As the brigade rode ‘back from the mouth of hell,’ soldiers and horses collapsed; few remained to make the journey back.
In Bayonet Charge, the poem is written in free verse consisting of three stanzas. The poem is almost split into sections, with the first stanza, eight lines in length describing the situation. The second stanza halts for a moment to explore the soldier’s bewilderment at his fellow soldiers still being patriotic despite the certainty of death. The final verse explains the soldier’s realisation concluding from the previous stanza, that he has to keep moving for the chance of survival. Hughes uses continuous enjambement throughout the poem, to signify the persona’s confusion at the other soldiers’ patriotism, which is backed up by the use of one rhetorical question – ‘was he the hand pointing that second?’ Here the persona is yet again questioning war, and asking himself why he is there, suggesting his distaste in war obedience.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is comprised of six numbered stanzas varying in length from six to eleven lines. The longest stanza is the fourth, which describes the valiant attempt of the outnumbered cavalry to charge a line of guns and a waiting enemy army. The shortest and final stanza addresses the reader, asking them to wonder at such patriotic obedience. Perhaps this shows that Alfred Lord Tennyson himself disagrees with the loyalty shown by the ‘six hundred’. The shortness of the last stanza echoes the brevity of the young ‘noble’ lives lost. Tennyson uses a dactylic metre to give the effect of the cavalry charge, with the poem’s galloping rhythm when read aloud. This metre causes the emphasis of parts of the words, ‘boldly’ and ‘honour’. This could be to stress the significance in the soldiers’ bravery in the fight for their cause, despite the fact that ‘someone had blunder’d’.
In conclusion, I think that both poets convey the bravery shown by the soldiers in the battles in which they are part of. In Bayonet Charge, Ted Hughes’ persona speaks from an upfront view, questioning the stupidity even, in the obedience of his fellow army members. On the other hand, in The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson states that the reader should admire what the soldiers have done for our nation, despite the obvious mistake made by the commander during the battle.
Compare the methods poets use to present their points of view in ‘next to of course god america i’ (page 48) and in one other poem from Conflict
Next to of course god america i is poem with e e cummings proclaiming his love for his country, by quoting famous phrases from songs. The Charge of the Light Brigade is a poem describing the horrific scenes of a battle, with many deaths due to a mistake made by the commander of the ‘six hundred’ men.
Cummings begins his poem by proclaiming his love for his country by quoting words from ‘The star-spangled banner’, the American national anthem, and another patriotic song, ‘My country, ’tis of thee’, and sung to the tune of ‘God save the Queen’. However, the tone becomes quite obviously cynical as cummings mocks the way some people, particularly politicians, ‘acclaim’ America’s ‘glorious name’, and he goes on to focus on the numerous soldiers killed in battle. The poet argues that the soldiers went to war without considering whether it was right – or even dangerous – to do so, and were called heroes when they had been sacrificed for their country’s cause. Should nobody speak their mind in ‘the land of free’, cummings asks. Having expressed his beliefs so passionately, a second voice, who has previously been listening, describes the speaker quickly downing ‘a glass of water’. At line nine, the emphasis in mood changes from cynicism to the ‘heroic happy dead’. It appears that the poet is becoming almost increasingly angry. Perhaps cummings grows slightly hysterical as he protests about the futile waste of ‘beautiful’ young lives. The two final triplets have a tight effective rhyme scheme, not like the corny patriotism of the national anthem rhymes, but with emotive words such as ‘dead’, ‘slaughter’ and ‘mute’.
Sarcasm can also be sensed in the poem. The throwaway expression ‘and so forth’ suggests that cummings has little respect for any of the lines of the national anthems. He does not complete the lines of the song lyrics: they have nothing important to say. ‘deafanddumb’ is purposely written as one word. Worldwide, America is praised, he states, and even those who can neither hear nor speak still praise its glorious name. Line eight uses a list to make its point accompanied with alliterative letters ‘j’ and the gushing ‘g’ sound, with ‘glorious’ and ‘gorry’ preceding ‘gosh’ and ‘gum’. ‘What of it we should worry’ repeats the ‘w’ sound to question America’s patriotic fervor.
Overall e e cummings portrays his views by suggesting the innocence of the soldiers who fought, and questioning how the American citizen can still praise their own country despite the fact that they lost many young lives through ridiculous decisions.
From the very beginning of The Charge of the Light Brigade the reader is thrown into the action. The six hundred cavalry are ordered to ‘charge for the guns’ by an unnamed ‘he’.
Compare the ways the poets present the destructive impact of conflict in The Yellow Palm (page 37) and one other poem from Conflict.
The Yellow Palm by Robert Minhinnick describes his experiences when he was walking through Baghdad in 1998. The poet stated that he was inspired by the beauty and fear of conflict, and how they go together perfectly.
Each stanza of The yellow palm contains a contrast in moods – beauty conflicts with violence, and the result is disturbing. The ‘lilac stems’, symbols of early love and mourning, make an idyllic picture, but the detail that the dead man has been prematurely and cruelly killed by breathing in poisonous gas distorts the image. ‘The golden mosque’ is a magnificent building built for worship and tranquility, but an unexpected violent attack has brought the violence of war into the worshippers’ daily lives. The fresh smell of the Tigris cannot compete with the cruel relentless heat – even the sun is personified in war-related terms: ‘barbarian’ and ‘armistice’. This bathos portrays how great the effect of conflict actually is, almost completely turning an idyllic scene on its head. Minhinnick uses colour to make the stark contrasts in the poem even more vivid. ‘Lilac stems’, ‘golden mosque’ and ‘yellow dates’ are vibrant colours, but they are quickly dulled by the ‘black dinars’ and the menacing ‘silver caravan’. The alliterative ‘s’ sound is made use of efficaciously in stanza five, where the Cruise missile’s flight, close to the Baghdad streets, is frighteningly described. The sustained ‘s’ sound and repeated word ‘slow’ make the shiny flying bomb sound dauntingly sinister, yet, when used in the final line of the stanza – ‘and blessed it with a smile’ – the sibilant ‘s’ transforms the sombre mood, to one of hope of forgetting the past violence and looking forward to a brighter future. Once again fear and beauty co-exist.
Belfast Confetti is a poem written in first person, giving a dramatic description of what it felt like to be caught up in the violent riots in Belfast in the 1970s.
Ciaran Carson in Belfast Confetti explores the aftermath of an IRA bombing, where there is chaos and the ‘riot squad’ moves in. In the narrator’s confusion and terror, the poet cannot find his way through the maze of Belfast streets that he usually knows so well. The immediate impact of the bombing is shown when the persona is stopped and interrogated by British soldiers, but he is unable to communicate with them, to answer their straightforward questions. This emphasises the panic and confusion caused by violence; nothing appears to make sense to the poet any more. Belfast Confetti is full of structure that stimulates an effect of war. Just as the poet feels out of control, so the sentences are erratic. Near the central section of the poem, Carson’s language stops and starts, whether because of ‘a burst of rapid fire…’ or because he repeatedly loses his way and has to turn back: ‘Dead end again’. Furthermore, regular use of enjambement effectively throws emphasis on single words like ‘explosion’ and ‘stuttering’, and the natural break at the end of line sixteen, where the speaker seems to stop mid-question, stresses the confused state, when inhuman masked figures impede his progress.
The title Belfast Confetti could be a euphemism for miscellaneous objects that were thrown during street riots: ‘nuts, bolts, nails, car keys’, and even tin cans. The irony is shown of conflict here. ‘Nuts’ and ‘bolts’ are usually utilised to hold things together, but instead in war they are used to hurt and alienate others, doing the almost opposite – tearing things apart. Moreover, ‘confetti’ is usually thrown over a new bride and groom to celebrate a happy union, but here small pieces of metal are hurled to break up relationships and create discord. Nearer the end of the poem Carson uses questions in a list form, not only to suggest confusion, but they inform the reader of how routine conflict is in Belfast, and also of the standard, impersonal questions the soldiers ask. The disturbed individual, lost in his own city, seems unable to answer. Punctuation is the way humans make sense of language. It tells us when to pause, stop and resume again. Too little punctuation causes confusion, whilst too much results in short, chaotic sentences. The speaker in the poem is caught up in a violent bout of street fighting and cannot ‘complete a sentence in his head’. Carson skillfully weaves most types of punctuation marks into the poem. ‘A burst of rapid fire’ is followed by an ellipsis, a mark showing something has been missed out, or there is no more to follow. This adds to the turmoil-taking place. Visual tricks are played; ‘an asterisk’ on the map looks as though there has been an explosion on the paper. This is followed by a ‘hyphenated line’ – which links the explosion to bullets ricocheting around the persona. The constant change in the poem’s line lengths, emphasises how unaware the poet is of his whereabouts and this develops the bewilderment of the situation.
Argentina Arsenal
Brazil Bayern Munich
Columbia Chelsea
Denmark Derby
England Everton
France Fulham
Ghana Galatasaray
Hungary Hamburg
Israel
Japan
Kazakhstan
Liberia
Mozambique
Niger
Oman
Peru
Qatar
Russia
Sudan
Turkey
Uganda
Vatican City
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
In Mametz Wood, by Owen Sheers and Futility, by Wilfred Owen, their separate perspectives of conflict and war are shown throughout, with the use of imagery, and personification to show the poets’ changes in emotion. Owen Sheers wrote his poem in the perspective of what happened in the past, with the poem being influenced by Sheers seeing a picture of a mass grave, provoking gruesome images. Futility is written in the present tense, as Owen himself had war experience, and the perspective is of how aimless war is.
Heavy imagery is utilised in Mametz Wood to describe the method and way in which the bones that have been dug up after one hundred years, were buried. Owen Sheers describes the remnants of the soldiers as a mere ‘broken bird’s egg of a skull’ and as a ‘broken mosaic of bone’. The repeated word ‘broken’ could be metaphorical for the way in which the dead soldiers wives or partners’ hearts were broken with the realisation of their partner’s deaths, or it could signify Sheers’ views of war as damaging and degrading. The fact that the poet describes the skulls as that of a ‘broken bird’s egg’, implies how fragile a life can be, not just the actual, disturbing image of a crushed ‘skull’. In contrast to the effect of the above quotes, Sheers’ use of a ‘mosaic of bone linked arm in arm’ suggests that behind all the aggression and unsettling image, lies the still remaining unity of the soldiers, unlike the ‘boots that outlasted them’. In the line ‘their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre’, the verb ‘dance’ is normally considered to have positive associations, however this is opposed by the word ‘macabre’, intensifying the gruesome image of the soldiers’ grave.
On the other hand, in Futility, Wilfred Owen’s simple, but powerful imagery is used to show Owen’s futile perspective of conflict. The employment of the ‘sun’ to give the soldier life, suggests the metaphorical hope of the ‘sun’ as almost godlike, giving life, but in this case it is pointless. Owen’s futile vision of conflict is emphasised in the second line of the first stanza. The word ‘awoke’ suggests how the ‘sun’ used to wake the dying comrade, but that was ‘once’, and now there is no hope, as the ‘sun’ does not ‘rouse him now’. ‘Whispering of fields unsown’ is an ambiguous clause, connoting not only the barren fields left behind in England, because of the soldier’s absence, but also the future now denied to this young man, who has become an innocent victim of conflict. ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ could be a reference to the Biblical nature of God creating man from ‘clay’. This could again imply the thwarted attempt of ceasing war and rousing the soldier, because the hope of a miracle like God’s creation of man from ‘clay’ is impossible.
Mametz Wood is twenty-one lines, structured in one long stanza, divided into four sections. The first nine lines describes how the farmers have been unearthing pieces of bone for many years. The second line is cut off from the first emphasising the way the ‘young[s]’ lives were ‘wasted’. The separate descriptions and images of the bones and remnants are also separated into different lines, almost being metaphorical for the way the bones are scattered. In the next three lines the poet’s voice is heard, reflecting on the way discoveries are still being made that bring the past into the present. All three lines are combined in enjambement, mirroring what the words say – ‘reaching back into itself for reminders’. Although in free verse, there are two examples of half rhyme in the poem. Lines eight and nine close the first section with an almost rhyming couplet; ‘run’ and ‘guns’. At the end of the poem lines nineteen and twenty-one finish with ‘sung’ and ‘tongues’, and this gives a feeling of finality to the poem, perhaps finality to war and conflict.
Futility is written in fourteen lines, with some of the features of a traditional sonnet, but instead of eight lines followed by six, it is divided into two seven-line stanzas. Like Mametz Wood the poem is very much of irregularity. The persona is shocked and full of despair throughout the poem, and therefore the irregularity and lack of rhythm could imply the lack of hope for the persona and instead his confusion. Unlike Mametz Wood, the rhythm does become more controlled, with stronger iambic metre after the first four lines. It is as if the urgency of the moment and the initial faith in the sun’s power to revive the fallen comrade needs a rushed chaotic rhythm. As the realisation sets in to the narrator that the ‘sun’ has no power over death, the rhythm becomes more steady and somber. This could denote a similar hope for the finality of war and conflict as Owen Sheers’ poem.
Although both poets explore the theme of conflict from different times, so may have different factors influencing their style and vision of war, they both emphasise the senselessness of disputes and their hope for the finality of war. Throughout Mametz Wood and Futility both Owen Sheers and Wilfred Owen use powerful, symbolic imagery to provoke gruesome, disturbing images, with Sheers describing it from the perspective from the future looking into the past, and Owen’s persona from personal war experience. Sheers’ poem is mainly of irregular structure, suggesting the way the Battle of the Somme has interrupted the Welsh soldiers’ futures, while Owen’s poem does change from the irregular structure to show the narrator’s confusion, to a rhythmic tone. This is during the narrator’s realisation of the unlikelihood of bringing his fellow soldier back to life, and the rhythm shows a sudden change and control in Owen’s emotions, to a sombre, solemn atmosphere.
Compare how poets present bravery in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (page 43) and in one other poem from conflict.
The Charge of the Light Brigade was written before the 19th century and gave the poets view of war. The poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Crimean War. The War was also significant as an early example of work of modern war correspondents. Bayonet Charge describes a charge during a war using one soldier to speak for all.
Lord Tennyson utilizes a lot of repetition in his imagery to portray a battle scene. From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is thrown into the action. The six hundred cavalry are ordered to ‘Charge for the guns’ by an unnamed ‘he’. Not a single soldier was discouraged or distressed by the command to charge forward, even though all the soldiers realized that their commander had made a terrible mistake: ‘Someone had blundered.’ The role of the soldier is to obey and ‘not to make reply...not to reason why,’ so they followed orders and rode into the “valley of death.”. They are being asked to sacrifice themselves by charging into blazing gunfire, and they follow rules without question because of their sense of loyalty and duty. They ride well, but their swords are useless against the Russian gunfire from both sides, with ‘cannon to right of them’ and ‘cannon to left of them’. Cannons behind and on both sides of the soldiers now assaulted them with shots and shells. As the brigade rode ‘back from the mouth of hell,’ soldiers and horses collapsed; few remained to make the journey back.
Hughes constructs the poem with interesting varieties of imagery, which provoke vivid images in the mind. His word choice also describes how the soldier is feeling in each stanza. Bayonet Charge is a remarkable poem because both the physical and mental sides of an individual are mentioned frequently throughout the poem. Bayonet Charge is about a patriotic soldier fighting in a battle for his country. The poem depicts bravery through the narration of one soldier during a bayonet charge. Ted Hughes imagines the soldier questioning his individual role in the war and why he continues to run towards such danger. This is unlike The Charge of the Light Brigade as the soldier doubts the war, instead of walking into it just to show patriotism. In Bayonet Charge it is as though the soldier has been frozen in time for a second. Suddenly a ‘hare’, caught in the firing, dies violently, and then he realises he has to continue forwards with ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera/Dropped’. Instead the soldier simply ‘runs’ to escape the terror of the ‘blue crackling air’ and the fate of the ‘hare’.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is comprised of six numbered stanzas varying in length from six to eleven lines. The longest stanza is the fourth, which describes the valiant attempt of the outnumbered cavalry to charge a line of guns and a waiting enemy army. The shortest and final stanza addresses the reader, asking them to wonder at such patriotic obedience. Perhaps this shows that Alfred Lord Tennyson himself disagrees with the loyalty shown by the ‘six hundred’. The shortness of the last stanza echoes the brevity of the young ‘noble’ lives lost. Tennyson uses a dactylic metre to give the effect of the cavalry charge, with the poem’s galloping rhythm when read aloud. This metre causes the emphasis of parts of the words, ‘boldly’ and ‘honour’. This could be to stress the significance in the soldiers’ bravery in the fight for their cause, despite the fact that ‘someone had blunder’d’.
In Bayonet Charge, the poem is written in free verse consisting of three stanzas. The poem is almost split into sections, with the first stanza, eight lines in length describing the situation. The second stanza halts for a moment to explore the soldier’s bewilderment at his fellow soldiers still being patriotic despite the certainty of death. The final verse explains the soldier’s realisation concluding from the previous stanza, that he has to keep moving for the chance of survival. Hughes uses continuous enjambement throughout the poem, to signify the persona’s confusion at the other soldiers’ patriotism, which is backed up by the use of one rhetorical question – ‘was he the hand pointing that second?’ Here the persona is yet again questioning war, and asking himself why he is there, suggesting his distaste in war obedience.
In conclusion, I think that although both poets do convey the bravery shown by the soldiers in the battles in which they are part of, in Bayonet Charge, Ted Hughes’ persona from an upfront view, questions the stupidity even, in the obedience his fellow army members. On the other hand, in The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson states that the reader should admire what the soldiers have done for our nation.
Compare how poets use language to present strong feelings in ‘Poppies’ and one other poem from conflict.
Poppies by Jane Weir describes in first person, of a mother grieving for the loss of her soldier son, in the days before Armistice Sunday. She reflects on a time when she had pinned a poppy on her growing son’s lapel before he dashed out of the house. The persona finds herself drawn to the war memorial in the churchyard and longs to hear her dead son’s voice again. The Right Word by Imtiaz Dharker is also in first person. The narrator examines the word ‘terrorist’ from different points of view, moving through other options of the names for people who are involved in violence. Nearer the end of the poem, the persona acknowledges the labeling of a person as a ‘terrorist’ and discovers the true personality behind the word.
The dramatic monologue of Poppies seems to be an elegy, where the mother’s memory takes her on a journey. The idea of the poppy, a symbol of remembrance for the war dead, reminds her of a memorable time in the past. The raconteur experiences feelings of loss when she visits her son’s empty bedroom. Here time blurs as not only would she have missed her schoolboy son, leaping ‘intoxicated’ into his future, but also many times, since his death, she will have visited his room. The mother states that she ‘released a song bird from its cage’ and this could symbolise her wish for her voice and her ‘song’ to reach her son in heaven. The narrative moves on to the churchyard led by another symbol – ‘a single dove’ – to a war memorial. This implies a record of the sacrifice made by the many young men in the past conflicts, most of whom would have mothers in the same position as the persona. The fact that the symbol is of a ‘single dove’ suggests the mother’s feelings towards her ‘single’ son as part of the whole conflict, portraying deep feelings for the frail, immature young boy.
Poppies explores the effects of conflict when grief is brought into the home and experienced on the domestic front. The language of maternal caring intermingles with the language of the battlefield. The poppy brooch is described with the imagery of conflict. The metaphor, ‘spasms of paper red’ could denote splatters of blood, perhaps also the sharp, painful agonies of those affected by war. The personality removes the cat hairs, in the way a female notices detail, the ‘sellotape bandaged around (her) hand’. There is a sense of anxiety, as the child has to be prepared for the experience of school or the conflicts of the outside world. The cat hairs suggest the marking out of territory – the home, security and ultimate safety – whereas ‘bandaged’ reinforces the fear of harm, whether from serious injury or everyday knocks. There is a strong sense of the mother wanting to protect and heal.
Imtiaz Dharker relies heavily on repetition to get her main point across in The Right Word. Dharker plays with the first line ‘Outside the door’ throughout the poem. A door is a means of access; metaphorically, it is a barrier. In the first stanza she is afraid of the terrorist ‘lurking’ ominously. The door then becomes ‘that door’ and in stanza four, ‘your door’. The persona gradually brings the reader into her dilemma, inviting us to question what is ‘the right word’.
Compare how poets show attitudes to war in ‘Futility’ and one other poem from Conflict.
In Mametz Wood, by Owen Sheers and Futility, by Wilfred Owen, their separate perspectives of conflict and war are shown throughout, with the use of imagery, and personification to show the poets’ changes in emotion. Owen Sheers wrote his poem in the perspective of what happened in the past, with the poem being influenced by Sheers seeing a picture of a mass grave, provoking gruesome images. Futility is written in the present tense, as Owen himself had war experience, and the perspective is of how aimless war is.
In Futility, Wilfred Owen’s simple, but powerful imagery is used to show Owen’s futile perspective of conflict. The employment of the ‘sun’ to give the soldier life, suggests the metaphorical hope of the ‘sun’ as almost godlike, giving life, but in this case it is pointless. Owen’s futile vision of conflict is emphasised in the second line of the first stanza. The word ‘awoke’ suggests how the ‘sun’ used to wake the dying comrade, but that was ‘once’, and now there is no hope, as the ‘sun’ does not ‘rouse him now’. ‘Whispering of fields unsown’ is an ambiguous clause, connoting not only the barren fields left behind in England, because of the soldier’s absence, but also the future now denied to this young man, who has become an innocent victim of conflict. ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ could be a reference to the Biblical nature of God creating man from ‘clay’. This could again imply the thwarted attempt of ceasing war and rousing the soldier, because the hope of a miracle like God’s creation of man from ‘clay’ is impossible.
On the other hand, heavy imagery is utilised in Mametz Wood to describe the method and way in which the bones that have been dug up after one hundred years, were buried. Owen Sheers describes the remnants of the soldiers as a mere ‘broken bird’s egg of a skull’ and as a ‘broken mosaic of bone’. The repeated word ‘broken’ could be metaphorical for the way in which the dead soldiers wives or partners’ hearts were broken with the realisation of their partner’s deaths, or it could signify Sheers’ views of war as damaging and degrading. The fact that the poet describes the skulls as that of a ‘broken bird’s egg’, implies how fragile a life can be, not just the actual, disturbing image of a crushed ‘skull’. In contrast to the effect of the above quotes, Sheers’ use of a ‘mosaic of bone linked arm in arm’ suggests that behind all the aggression and unsettling image, lies the still remaining unity of the soldiers, unlike the ‘boots that outlasted them’. In the line ‘their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre’, the verb ‘dance’ is normally considered to have positive associations, however this is opposed by the word ‘macabre’, intensifying the gruesome image of the soldiers’ grave.
Futility is written in fourteen lines, with some of the features of a traditional sonnet, but instead of eight lines followed by six, it is divided into two seven-line stanzas. Like Mametz Wood the poem is very much of irregularity. The persona is shocked and full of despair throughout the poem, and therefore the irregularity and lack of rhythm could imply the lack of hope for the persona and instead his confusion. Unlike Mametz Wood, the rhythm does become more controlled, with stronger iambic metre after the first four lines. It is as if the urgency of the moment and the initial faith in the sun’s power to revive the fallen comrade needs a rushed chaotic rhythm. As the realisation sets in to the narrator that the ‘sun’ has no power over death, the rhythm becomes more steady and somber. This could denote a similar hope for the finality of war and conflict as Owen Sheers’ poem.
Mametz Wood is twenty-one lines, structured in one long stanza, divided into four sections. The first nine lines describe how the farmers have been unearthing pieces of bone for many years. The second line is cut off from the first emphasising the way the ‘young[s]’ lives were ‘wasted’. The separate descriptions and images of the bones and remnants are also separated into different lines, almost being metaphorical for the way the bones are scattered. In the next three lines the poet’s voice is heard, reflecting on the way discoveries are still being made that bring the past into the present. All three lines are combined in enjambement, mirroring what the words say – ‘reaching back into itself for reminders’. Although in free verse, there are two examples of half rhyme in the poem. Lines eight and nine close the first section with an almost rhyming couplet; ‘run’ and ‘guns’. At the end of the poem lines nineteen and twenty-one finish with ‘sung’ and ‘tongues’, and this gives a feeling of finality to the poem, perhaps finality to war and conflict.
Although both poets explore the theme of conflict from different times, so may have different factors influencing their style and vision of war, they both emphasise the senselessness of disputes and their hope for the finality of war. Throughout Mametz Wood and Futility both Owen Sheers and Wilfred Owen use powerful, symbolic imagery to provoke gruesome, disturbing images, with Sheers describing it from the perspective from the future looking into the past, and Owen’s persona from personal war experience. Sheers’ poem is mainly of irregular structure, suggesting the way the Battle of the Somme has interrupted the Welsh soldiers’ futures, while Owen’s poem does change from the irregular structure to show the narrator’s confusion, to a rhythmic tone. This is during the narrator’s realisation of the unlikelihood of bringing his fellow soldier back to life, and the rhythm shows a sudden change and control in Owen’s emotions, to a sombre, solemn atmosphere.
Compare how poets use language to present strong feelings in ‘Poppies’ (page 41) and one other poem from Conflict.
In the two poems Poppies and The right word language is used to present strong feelings. Poppies is about a mother whose son is off to war and her memories of him as a child.
Jane Weir uses language to show her worry and melancholy about her son who is leaving to go to war. This is first shown to us in the first stanza after talking about poppies being placed on war graves - ‘Before you left/I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals/spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade/of yellow bias binding around your blazer.’ What the poet says is significant because she is remembering exactly what she did that day all those years ago in vivid detail. This I think is because this is the day he leaves to go to war and this stands out a lot to her and she shows her emotion when it says ‘All my words/flattened, rolled, turned into felt/ slowly melting.’ Poppies is written as a dramatic monologue, acting as an elegy, where the mother’s memory takes her on a journey. The idea of the poppy, a symbol of remembrance for the war dead, reminds the narrator of the time she pinned a poppy on her son’s blazer. The persona appears to experience feelings of loss when she visits her son’s empty bedroom. Here in the poem, time seems to blend together. Not only would the mother have missed her schoolboy son, leaping ‘intoxicated’ into his future, but also many times since his death, she will have visited his chamber. I think that the ‘released… song bird’ could symbolise the mother’s emotional sense of release once her child has left the house.
The narrative progresses to the churchyard, led by another symbol – ‘a single dove’ – to a war memorial, a record of the sacrifice made by many young men in past conflicts, most of whom would have had grieving mothers. War is harsh and brutal and many poems are written from the point of view of the soldiers, and those engaged in war, but Poppies looks at the effects of conflict when grief is brought into the home and experienced on the domestic front. The language of maternal caring intermingles with the language of the battlefield. The poppy is described with the imagery of conflict. The metaphor ‘spasms of paper red’ could denote splatters of blood, perhaps also the sharp, painful agonies of those affected by the conflict. The bright red poppy contrasts with ‘a blockade/of yellow bias binding’. The military metaphor prevents the escape of the raw edge under the binding: the young child has to grow up, the young man is sent into battle without life’s experiences. The narrator checks out her son’s school uniform in the way a soldier’s kit would be routinely expected. However, she smooths down the ‘shirt’s/upturned collar’ in a loving manner. The mother removes the cat hairs, in the way a female notices detail, the ‘sellotape bandaged around [her] hand’. Here there is the sense of anxiety, as the child has to be prepared for life at school or the conflicts of the outside world. The cat hairs could suggest the marking out of territory – the home, security and ultimately safety – whereas ‘bandaged’ reinforces the fear of harm, whether from serious injury of everyday knocks. The reader can tell that the mother knows her responsibility of protecting and healing.
The right word by Imtiaz Dharker, examines the word ‘terrorist’ from different points of view, moving through other optional names for people who are involved in violence.
Dharker relies heavily on repetition to make her point of view prevail. She manipulates the first line ‘Outside the door’ throughout the poem. A door is a means of access; metaphorically, it is a barrier. In the first stanza the narrator is afraid of the terrorist ‘lurking’ ominously. The door then becomes ‘that door’ and in stanza four ‘your door’. The poet gradually beckons the reader into her dilemma, inviting us to question what is ‘the right word’. ‘Shadows’, suggesting a dark area where fears and doubts hide, is also repeated in the first six stanzas. We are frightened of terrorist acts in our own country. But in the poem, the terrorist is only a ‘boy’ who is left when the ‘shadows’ disappear. The ‘boy’ has to be invited in, where he becomes ‘the child’. The narrator also shows uncomfortable feelings in her descriptions – ‘too hard’ and ‘too steady’, are descriptions of somebody confident and unwavering in his convictions, causing an awkward relationship to be portrayed between the mother and her son. ‘Is that the wrong description?’ the poet asks, drawing the reader into the poem, and ‘I haven’t got this right’ gives an air of immediacy. The persona concludes the poem by insisting that we think cautiously about our easy use of the word ‘terrorist’ when she writes ‘outside your door’, and ‘a boy who looks like your son, too’.
Overall, both Jane Weir and Imtiaz Dharker use vivid, emotional language to convey the feelings of worry, loneliness and love. Weir explores a mother’s loss of her son, from domestic first-hand experience, whilst Dharker investigates the wrong use of a word to describe someone of whom is closer to you than one can imagine.
Compare how poets present the effects of conflict in Belfast Confetti (page 40) and one other poem from Conflict.
Belfast Confetti is a poem written in first person, giving a dramatic description of what it felt like to be caught up in the violent riots in Belfast in the 1970s. The yellow palm describes the poet’s experiences when he was walking through Baghdad in 1998.
Ciaran Carson in Belfast Confetti explores the aftermath of an IRA bombing, where there is chaos and the ‘riot squad’ moves in. In the narrator’s confusion and terror, the poet cannot find his way through the maze of Belfast streets that he usually knows so well. The immediate impact of the bombing is shown when the persona is stopped and interrogated by British soldiers, but he is unable to communicate with them, to answer their straightforward questions. This emphasises the panic and confusion caused by violence; nothing appears to make sense to the poet any more. Belfast Confetti is full of structure that stimulates an effect of war. Just as the poet feels out of control, so the sentences are erratic. Near the central section of the poem, Carson’s language stops and starts, whether because of ‘a burst of rapid fire…’ or because he repeatedly loses his way and has to turn back: ‘Dead end again’. Furthermore, regular use of enjambement effectively throws emphasis on single words like ‘explosion’ and ‘stuttering’, and the natural break at the end of line sixteen, where the speaker seems to stop mid-question, stresses the confused state, when inhuman masked figures impede his progress.
The title Belfast Confetti could be a euphemism for miscellaneous objects that were thrown during street riots: ‘nuts, bolts, nails, car keys’, and even tin cans. The irony is shown of conflict here. ‘Nuts’ and ‘bolts’ are usually utilised to hold things together, but instead in war they are used to hurt and alienate others, doing the almost opposite – tearing things apart. Moreover, ‘confetti’ is usually thrown over a new bride and groom to celebrate a happy union, but here small pieces of metal are hurled to break up relationships and create discord. Nearer the end of the poem Carson uses questions in a list form, not only to suggest confusion, but they inform the reader of how routine conflict is in Belfast, and also of the standard, impersonal questions the soldiers ask. The disturbed individual, lost in his own city, seems unable to answer. Punctuation is the way humans make sense of language. It tells us when to pause, stop and resume again. Too little punctuation causes confusion, whilst too much results in short, chaotic sentences. The speaker in the poem is caught up in a violent bout of street fighting and cannot ‘complete a sentence in his head’. Carson skillfully weaves most types of punctuation marks into the poem. ‘A burst of rapid fire’ is followed by an ellipsis, a mark showing something has been missed out, or there is no more to follow. This adds to the turmoil-taking place. Visual tricks are played; ‘an asterisk’ on the map looks as though there has been an explosion on the paper. This is followed by a ‘hyphenated line’ – which links the explosion to bullets ricocheting around the persona. The constant change in the poem’s line lengths, emphasises how unaware the poet is of his whereabouts and this develops the bewilderment of the situation.
Each stanza of The yellow palm contains a contrast in moods – beauty conflicts with violence, and the result is disturbing. The ‘lilac stems’, symbols of early love and mourning, make an idyllic picture, but the detail that the dead man has been prematurely and cruelly killed by breathing in poisonous gas distorts the image. ‘The golden mosque’ is a magnificent building built for worship and tranquility, but an unexpected violent attack has brought the violence of war into the worshippers’ daily lives. The fresh smell of the Tigris cannot compete with the cruel relentless heat – even the sun is personified in war-related terms: ‘barbarian’ and ‘armistice’. This bathos portrays how great the effect of conflict actually is, almost completely turning an idyllic scene on its head. Minhinnick uses colour to make the stark contrasts in the poem even more vivid. ‘Lilac stems’, ‘golden mosque’ and ‘yellow dates’ are vibrant colours, but they are quickly dulled by the ‘black dinars’ and the menacing ‘silver caravan’. The alliterative ‘s’ sound is made use of efficaciously in stanza five, where the Cruise missile’s flight, close to the Baghdad streets, is frighteningly described. The sustained ‘s’ sound and repeated word ‘slow’ make the shiny flying bomb sound dauntingly sinister, yet, when used in the final line of the stanza – ‘and blessed it with a smile’ – the sibilant ‘s’ transforms the sombre mood, to one of hope of forgetting the past violence and looking forward to a brighter future. Once again fear and beauty co-exist.
Compare how poets present the experience of soldiers in Bayonet Charge and one other poem from Conflict.
Bayonet Charge describes a charge during a war using one soldier to speak for all. The Charge of the Light Brigade was written before the 19th century and gave the poets view of war. The poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Crimean War. The War was also significant as an early example of work of modern war correspondents.
Hughes constructs the poem with interesting varieties of imagery, which provoke vivid images in the mind. His word choice also describes how the soldier is feeling in each stanza. Bayonet Charge is a remarkable poem because both the physical and mental sides of an individual are mentioned frequently throughout the poem. Bayonet Charge is about a patriotic soldier fighting in a battle for his country. The poem depicts bravery through the narration of one soldier during a bayonet charge. Ted Hughes imagines the soldier questioning his individual role in the war and why he continues to run towards such danger. This is unlike The Charge of the Light Brigade as the soldier doubts the war, instead of walking into it just to show patriotism. In Bayonet Charge it is as though the soldier has been frozen in time for a second. Suddenly a ‘hare’, caught in the firing, dies violently, and then he realises he has to continue forwards with ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera/Dropped’. Instead the soldier simply ‘runs’ to escape the terror of the ‘blue crackling air’ and the fate of the ‘hare’.
Lord Tennyson utilizes a lot of repetition in his imagery to portray a battle scene. From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is thrown into the action. The six hundred cavalry are ordered to ‘Charge for the guns’ by an unnamed ‘he’. Not a single soldier was discouraged or distressed by the command to charge forward, even though all the soldiers realized that their commander had made a terrible mistake: ‘Someone had blundered.’ The role of the soldier is to obey and ‘not to make reply...not to reason why,’ so they followed orders and rode into the “valley of death.”. They are being asked to sacrifice themselves by charging into blazing gunfire, and they follow rules without question because of their sense of loyalty and duty. They ride well, but their swords are useless against the Russian gunfire from both sides, with ‘cannon to right of them’ and ‘cannon to left of them’. Cannons behind and on both sides of the soldiers now assaulted them with shots and shells. As the brigade rode ‘back from the mouth of hell,’ soldiers and horses collapsed; few remained to make the journey back.
In Bayonet Charge, the poem is written in free verse consisting of three stanzas. The poem is almost split into sections, with the first stanza, eight lines in length describing the situation. The second stanza halts for a moment to explore the soldier’s bewilderment at his fellow soldiers still being patriotic despite the certainty of death. The final verse explains the soldier’s realisation concluding from the previous stanza, that he has to keep moving for the chance of survival. Hughes uses continuous enjambement throughout the poem, to signify the persona’s confusion at the other soldiers’ patriotism, which is backed up by the use of one rhetorical question – ‘was he the hand pointing that second?’ Here the persona is yet again questioning war, and asking himself why he is there, suggesting his distaste in war obedience.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is comprised of six numbered stanzas varying in length from six to eleven lines. The longest stanza is the fourth, which describes the valiant attempt of the outnumbered cavalry to charge a line of guns and a waiting enemy army. The shortest and final stanza addresses the reader, asking them to wonder at such patriotic obedience. Perhaps this shows that Alfred Lord Tennyson himself disagrees with the loyalty shown by the ‘six hundred’. The shortness of the last stanza echoes the brevity of the young ‘noble’ lives lost. Tennyson uses a dactylic metre to give the effect of the cavalry charge, with the poem’s galloping rhythm when read aloud. This metre causes the emphasis of parts of the words, ‘boldly’ and ‘honour’. This could be to stress the significance in the soldiers’ bravery in the fight for their cause, despite the fact that ‘someone had blunder’d’.
In conclusion, I think that both poets convey the bravery shown by the soldiers in the battles in which they are part of. In Bayonet Charge, Ted Hughes’ persona speaks from an upfront view, questioning the stupidity even, in the obedience of his fellow army members. On the other hand, in The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson states that the reader should admire what the soldiers have done for our nation, despite the obvious mistake made by the commander during the battle.
Compare the methods poets use to present their points of view in ‘next to of course god america i’ (page 48) and in one other poem from Conflict
Next to of course god america i is poem with e e cummings proclaiming his love for his country, by quoting famous phrases from songs. The Charge of the Light Brigade is a poem describing the horrific scenes of a battle, with many deaths due to a mistake made by the commander of the ‘six hundred’ men.
Cummings begins his poem by proclaiming his love for his country by quoting words from ‘The star-spangled banner’, the American national anthem, and another patriotic song, ‘My country, ’tis of thee’, and sung to the tune of ‘God save the Queen’. However, the tone becomes quite obviously cynical as cummings mocks the way some people, particularly politicians, ‘acclaim’ America’s ‘glorious name’, and he goes on to focus on the numerous soldiers killed in battle. The poet argues that the soldiers went to war without considering whether it was right – or even dangerous – to do so, and were called heroes when they had been sacrificed for their country’s cause. Should nobody speak their mind in ‘the land of free’, cummings asks. Having expressed his beliefs so passionately, a second voice, who has previously been listening, describes the speaker quickly downing ‘a glass of water’. At line nine, the emphasis in mood changes from cynicism to the ‘heroic happy dead’. It appears that the poet is becoming almost increasingly angry. Perhaps cummings grows slightly hysterical as he protests about the futile waste of ‘beautiful’ young lives. The two final triplets have a tight effective rhyme scheme, not like the corny patriotism of the national anthem rhymes, but with emotive words such as ‘dead’, ‘slaughter’ and ‘mute’.
Sarcasm can also be sensed in the poem. The throwaway expression ‘and so forth’ suggests that cummings has little respect for any of the lines of the national anthems. He does not complete the lines of the song lyrics: they have nothing important to say. ‘deafanddumb’ is purposely written as one word. Worldwide, America is praised, he states, and even those who can neither hear nor speak still praise its glorious name. Line eight uses a list to make its point accompanied with alliterative letters ‘j’ and the gushing ‘g’ sound, with ‘glorious’ and ‘gorry’ preceding ‘gosh’ and ‘gum’. ‘What of it we should worry’ repeats the ‘w’ sound to question America’s patriotic fervor.
Overall e e cummings portrays his views by suggesting the innocence of the soldiers who fought, and questioning how the American citizen can still praise their own country despite the fact that they lost many young lives through ridiculous decisions.
From the very beginning of The Charge of the Light Brigade the reader is thrown into the action. The six hundred cavalry are ordered to ‘charge for the guns’ by an unnamed ‘he’.
Compare the ways the poets present the destructive impact of conflict in The Yellow Palm (page 37) and one other poem from Conflict.
The Yellow Palm by Robert Minhinnick describes his experiences when he was walking through Baghdad in 1998. The poet stated that he was inspired by the beauty and fear of conflict, and how they go together perfectly.
Each stanza of The yellow palm contains a contrast in moods – beauty conflicts with violence, and the result is disturbing. The ‘lilac stems’, symbols of early love and mourning, make an idyllic picture, but the detail that the dead man has been prematurely and cruelly killed by breathing in poisonous gas distorts the image. ‘The golden mosque’ is a magnificent building built for worship and tranquility, but an unexpected violent attack has brought the violence of war into the worshippers’ daily lives. The fresh smell of the Tigris cannot compete with the cruel relentless heat – even the sun is personified in war-related terms: ‘barbarian’ and ‘armistice’. This bathos portrays how great the effect of conflict actually is, almost completely turning an idyllic scene on its head. Minhinnick uses colour to make the stark contrasts in the poem even more vivid. ‘Lilac stems’, ‘golden mosque’ and ‘yellow dates’ are vibrant colours, but they are quickly dulled by the ‘black dinars’ and the menacing ‘silver caravan’. The alliterative ‘s’ sound is made use of efficaciously in stanza five, where the Cruise missile’s flight, close to the Baghdad streets, is frighteningly described. The sustained ‘s’ sound and repeated word ‘slow’ make the shiny flying bomb sound dauntingly sinister, yet, when used in the final line of the stanza – ‘and blessed it with a smile’ – the sibilant ‘s’ transforms the sombre mood, to one of hope of forgetting the past violence and looking forward to a brighter future. Once again fear and beauty co-exist.
Belfast Confetti is a poem written in first person, giving a dramatic description of what it felt like to be caught up in the violent riots in Belfast in the 1970s.
Ciaran Carson in Belfast Confetti explores the aftermath of an IRA bombing, where there is chaos and the ‘riot squad’ moves in. In the narrator’s confusion and terror, the poet cannot find his way through the maze of Belfast streets that he usually knows so well. The immediate impact of the bombing is shown when the persona is stopped and interrogated by British soldiers, but he is unable to communicate with them, to answer their straightforward questions. This emphasises the panic and confusion caused by violence; nothing appears to make sense to the poet any more. Belfast Confetti is full of structure that stimulates an effect of war. Just as the poet feels out of control, so the sentences are erratic. Near the central section of the poem, Carson’s language stops and starts, whether because of ‘a burst of rapid fire…’ or because he repeatedly loses his way and has to turn back: ‘Dead end again’. Furthermore, regular use of enjambement effectively throws emphasis on single words like ‘explosion’ and ‘stuttering’, and the natural break at the end of line sixteen, where the speaker seems to stop mid-question, stresses the confused state, when inhuman masked figures impede his progress.
The title Belfast Confetti could be a euphemism for miscellaneous objects that were thrown during street riots: ‘nuts, bolts, nails, car keys’, and even tin cans. The irony is shown of conflict here. ‘Nuts’ and ‘bolts’ are usually utilised to hold things together, but instead in war they are used to hurt and alienate others, doing the almost opposite – tearing things apart. Moreover, ‘confetti’ is usually thrown over a new bride and groom to celebrate a happy union, but here small pieces of metal are hurled to break up relationships and create discord. Nearer the end of the poem Carson uses questions in a list form, not only to suggest confusion, but they inform the reader of how routine conflict is in Belfast, and also of the standard, impersonal questions the soldiers ask. The disturbed individual, lost in his own city, seems unable to answer. Punctuation is the way humans make sense of language. It tells us when to pause, stop and resume again. Too little punctuation causes confusion, whilst too much results in short, chaotic sentences. The speaker in the poem is caught up in a violent bout of street fighting and cannot ‘complete a sentence in his head’. Carson skillfully weaves most types of punctuation marks into the poem. ‘A burst of rapid fire’ is followed by an ellipsis, a mark showing something has been missed out, or there is no more to follow. This adds to the turmoil-taking place. Visual tricks are played; ‘an asterisk’ on the map looks as though there has been an explosion on the paper. This is followed by a ‘hyphenated line’ – which links the explosion to bullets ricocheting around the persona. The constant change in the poem’s line lengths, emphasises how unaware the poet is of his whereabouts and this develops the bewilderment of the situation.
Argentina Arsenal
Brazil Bayern Munich
Columbia Chelsea
Denmark Derby
England Everton
France Fulham
Ghana Galatasaray
Hungary Hamburg
Israel
Japan
Kazakhstan
Liberia
Mozambique
Niger
Oman
Peru
Qatar
Russia
Sudan
Turkey
Uganda
Vatican City
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
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