Poetry Coursework
The theme of memory has been presented throughout the following six poems through linguistic and structural techniques.
Carol Ann Duffy structures the poem “War photographer” with a deathly approach using enjambment and rhyming couplets. The enjambment is on-going like a never-ending dream, a nightmare. In the first stanza, it refers to religious imagery, the rhyming couplets could represent the pews in a church which is supported by”…in ordered rows, the only light is red and softly glows.” It creates emphasis and helps visualize death through the ordered rows of graves. Red is a colour of death. Each stanza is separated as if they are all different memories. Some sentences only consist of a few words like a label of a memory. They can also be punchy like the actions in war, bombs, fighting and gunshots. “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.” To add to the plosive effect, alliteration is used. It imitates and emphasizes the memories of war.
Carol Ann Duffy presents the theme of memory with guilt and regret. She compares rural England with the violent battle grounds. “Rural England, Home again to ordinary pain.” She refers to rural England with ordinary pain which could suggest the extreme pain felt on the battle ground can’t compare. The comparison of her memory and war allows the reader to relate. “…Fields which don’t explode beneath the feet, of running children in a nightmare heat.” Again she compares rural England with the violent battlegrounds. This shows a
The overall theme of the poem is sacrifice, more specifically, for the people that you love. Throughout the poem color and personification are used to paint a picture in the reader's head. “Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees.” (46) This description is used to create a monochromatic, gloomy, and dismal environment where the poem takes
The essay will consider the poem 'Practising' by the poet Mary Howe. It will explore how this poem generates its meaning and focus by analysing its techniques, metaphorical construct and its treatment of memory. The poem can primarily be seen to be a poem of missed opportunity. In this way is comes to form, alongside other poems of Howe's a study about a certain kind of loss and the recuperative efforts of memory, alongside the certainty of the failure of this recuperation. The paper will begin by giving a context to the poem with regard to Howe's life and work and will then proceed to analyse it directly, drawing attention to how it can be seen to fulfil this thesis about its content and meaning.
This extends to going to war. Shaun Tan and Gary Crew’s ‘Memorial’ represents how the bonds of friendship have led Australians into the most horrific of circumstances. The tree in the book embodies the memories of soldiers of past. It represents three generations of war in which Australia has fought and remembering the fallen comrades that died in battle. The book demonstrates an image of patriotism within Australia.
This quote provides the reader with an understanding of survivor guilt and intrusive memories since he carries on the words and experiences to his normal life after the war. The author gives a good understanding of PTSD throughout the novel and survivor guilt and intrusive memories are one of the things Tim O’Brien writes about the
It gives the poem an uneven feeling, as if the lines were incomplete, much like how the soldiers may not feel whole anymore after an over-exposure to the brutality of war. The last word in each line of stanza five: “to-day … move; … eye” and “cave” do not rhyme, showing how a dead man decaying in the open is unusual. This stanza differs from the others since this stanza is the only one to have no rhyming pattern at all. Though the lack of rhyming structure in the fifth stanza would most likely be overlooked, the lack of rhyming happens at the stanza about the soldier’s decaying body. The shift from semi-regular to irregular rhyming exemplifies how the sudden change from normality is meant to create the feeling
O’Brien shows readers and those who know veterans, how moments of morality and shame and guilt arise in war. The chapter “In the Field” shows many moments of shame and guilt for the characters as the result of a death. In the chapter Kiowa dies from sinking into the mud, and his friends are
By attaching stories to deaths, and names to the faces of soldiers who otherwise would be just another killed in action, the real experiences of what it was to be a soldier in Vietnam come to life in ways cold hard facts and reality cannot. O’Brien’s book is not about war. It’s about the people who lived through the terror of being in Vietnam. As O’Brien writes “It’s about love and memory. It's about sorrow”(81).
Similarly, imagery and setting are contrasted with the ugliness of war. Finally, a variety of language techniques coalesce to create extremely emotive language, exploring the gruelling and emotionally damaging nature of war’s conditions. Malouf’s application of third person perspective, serves to convey the influence of patriotism in times of war. Malouf conveys in the early chapters of ‘Fly Away Peter’ his idea that Australia was a young but patriotic nation in 1914, the year in which the text’s events take place.
When faced with war soldiers change, for better or for worse. Modern culture celebrates the glory of patriotic sacrifice. However, this celebration often leaves out the gritty details and trauma of violence behind war and the way it affects people. Homer’s The Odyssey and William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives clearly discuss these details. Both debate the long-awaited return of warriors that went off to fight a war and the way the experience changes the protagonists.
Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent, has a memory overflowing with the horrors of many battlefields and the helplessness of those trapped within them. He applies this memory to write War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, where he tutors us in the misery of war. To accomplish this goal, Hedges uses impactful imagery, appeals to other dissidents of war and classic writers, and powerful exemplification. Throughout his book, Hedges batters the readers with painful and grotesque, often first-hand, imagery from wars around the globe. He begins the book with his experience in Sarajevo, 1995.
Both Ted Hughes and Wilfred Owen present war in their poems “Bayonet Charge” and “Exposure”, respectively, as terrifying experiences, repeatedly mentioning the honest pointlessness of the entire ordeal to enhance the futility of the soldiers' deaths. Hughes’ “Bayonet Charge” focuses on one person's emotional struggle with their actions, displaying the disorientating and dehumanising qualities of war. Owen’s “Exposure”, on the other hand, depicts the impacts of war on the protagonists' nation, displaying the monotonous and unending futility of the situation by depicting the fate of soldiers who perished from hypothermia, exposed to the horrific conditions of open trench warfare before dawn. The use of third-person singular pronouns in “Bayonet
Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.
The novel acts as a response to the era it discusses by solidifying the un-generalized version of war through fictional anecdotes of the narrator and characters (Reed 1). The emotional truth is never portrayed correctly through historic context or media while the author was able to reciprocate the sentiments of the soldiers through the graphic battles or actions written in this novel. 3. Factors that influenced the author to publish this novel was partly due to his way of coping after war, using stories to keep the imagination alive. Towards the end of the book, O'Brien revealed that
More than 12,000 children under the age of 15 passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp, also known by its German name of Theresienstadt, between the years 1942 and 1944. Out of all the children, more than 90% lost their lives during the time of the Holocaust. Additionally, throughout this time, children would write poetry describing how they would like to be free and their faith in believing they would one day be free again and see the light of the sun. They would also write about the dreadful experiences they suffered through. To add on, the poet’s word choice helps to develop the narrator’s point of view.
The story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway depicts the wounding and post-traumatic experience of the First World War of the main character Harold Krebs and his family. Like most soldiers’ experience of the war, upon return to their lives back home, their lives virtually had no more meaning to them. Krebs presents a painful realization in this manner in which he interacts with his mother. She tries to think of her son as a hero and make him feel like one by encouraging him to re-tell his tales from the war. Krebs knows that the impressions his mother is making are not authentic and she, just like the rest of his fellow town folk are tired of hearing and reading the same stories from the war (De Baerdemaeker 24).