Involuntary Spies Marion Strobel

“Involuntary Spies” is an anti-war poem authored by Marion Strobel. Here is the link to the text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine. Published in January 1939, it was featured in an issue of the magazine POETRY. The issue was dedicated to verses in poems. The issue included several other poems and articles. Marion Strobel is an associate editor of Poetry, and a fiction writer, critic, and poet. Her poetry contained aspects of her emotions, friendships, relationships, observations, and keen sense. As quoted in another issue of the magazine, “She is one of those who are impelled to poetry not by a desire to have written, but by a need to write". Miss Strobel writes with imagination and with an unfailing honesty which charms. She
Similes and Rhetorical questions. Simile is used in the poem within the sentence, “But by the treacherous brain. Our thoughts are like gases. Creep: The comparison is of the thoughts and gas. How thoughts come/creep into the soldiers mind, sneakily, and no one knows about it or cares for it. Similes are used to help the audience create vivid imagery or to draw connections between the two things. Similes are typical and common in poems to add effects, mood, and textures. Smile is used effectively in relation to the context. The treacherous brain refers to how the soldiers have to be loyal, and how the brain betrays it and develops thoughts, doubts which should not exist. Along with that, it also allows the audience and the reader to help visualise how the thoughts come to the soldier's mind like gas which roams around us unnoticed. Including the Simile, the stanza has rhetorical questions which are the thoughts which come to the soldier's mind. The simile is followed up by rhetorical questions present in the last stanza. The questions are the thoughts which form the simile which creeps into the soldier’s mind like gas. Unnoticed, and uncared for. Miss Marion utilises rhetorical questioning to emphasise her point of view from the soldier’s viewpoint. How they ask themselves if what they are doing is right. Rhetorical questions are typically used in
Miss Marion has utilised both of them in the last stanza of the poem, “The involuntary Spies”. In the last stanza, the language feature personification is used in the phrase “Salvage the head, the brain is spreading death” It is personifying both the brain, and death in general to having human-like abilities. It is a thought that creeps into the soldier’s mind. The brain spreading death is equal to how the soldiers are killing people and their thoughts, they themselves are killing people. In the example, the brain is given the ability to spread stuff, which is a human-like ability. Personification applies human attributes to a non-human entity or inanimate object to express a point or idea. They are particularly common in poetry, such as our poem. The brain spreading death is personified as death cannot be spread, and brain, the brain cannot spread anything.The author uses personification to show her perspective of the war through a vivid, imagery language technique. The personification in the sentence “Salvage the head, the brain is spreading death” allows us to understand the author’s point. The author believes that the war is bad, and showcases the other people’s viewpoints, soldier’s in this case to prove her point. The sentence, along with personification, has metaphors incorporated within it. Metaphor compares two unrelated things,