Lament by Gillian Clarke and War Photographer by Duffy portrays two different storylines and views on war. It also presents how the impact of war made them feel. Clarke identifies war as an expression of sadness and anger. As well as showing her grief towards the many deaths caused by the Gulf War in 1991. Whilst, Duffy perceives war as chaos and the choice being made whether to record the horrific events of war or help out with the problem. Both of the poems have a completely different approach towards war and how they express their perception. This is effectively described/interpreted by displaying their own use of literary techniques, use of language and structuring of the poems.
Clarke presents her thoughts and ideas extensively throughout
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Clarke describes the persona passing through the horror of war, an example of this is when the poet mentions “For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness” in line three. Here she is talking about the green turtle and the phrase ‘nest of sickness’ gives a sense that war has reached so far that it isn’t safe anymore as the word nest should be a secure and warm place to be but here it is used as a dreadful place to be since the home (ocean) of the turtle is painted with filthy dirty oil. Another example is “The whale struck dumb by the missile's thunder” in line fifteen, as the poet used the word ‘thunder’ instead of ‘noise’ or ‘sound’. This metaphor creates a strong, bold effect in the line with the word ‘thunder’. This is a metaphor as the missile hasn’t literally stricken dumb the whale. This suggests that the poet might’ve used the word ‘thunder’ as a representation of the intensity and mass amount of sound created by the explosions the missiles made; hence deafened the whale. The poet also describes the impact of war in her poem as ‘the sun put out’, portraying that there is no longer peace or happiness on earth because the sun has completely blocked and extinguished life on earth since the sun is earth’s main source of energy and without it there is no life on earth. Lastly, “ashes of …show more content…
Metaphors are used greatly throughout this poem. An example of this is the phrase “spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”, this phrase also contains alliteration as spools of suffering set all begin with an ‘S’. This metaphor represents the people pictured in the photographs suffering as it isn’t the spools which are suffering. The ‘S’s’ used in this metaphor also creates a sibilance effect as if the poet is whispering. Additionally, there is a paradox present in how he has organised suffering, the chaos of pain and war into neat ordered rows. This regularity/order also reflects how the poem is structured. Again ‘ordered rows’ suggests that the graves/coffins of the dead soldiers are neatly organised into rows. In stanza three it first starts off mysteriously and the half developed photograph is being described. An example metaphor from this stanza “a half-formed ghost” suggests that the vague features of the the man in the photograph may seem to the photographer, like the spirit of a soldier that he remembers while taking the
This disheartening conceit, that eternally battles time for relevance, illuminates lack of importance people place on living beings, and on life in general. Humankind has lost sight of the original divinity of existence a Randall Jarrell, in his chilling anti-war poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” emphasizes the stark contrast between the warm comfort of the speaker’s previous life and his cold, painful sufferings as a gunner at the warfront, in order to condemn the government’s impassivity towards fallen soldiers, treated as replaceable parts in war’s perpetual assembly line. In the first sentence of the poem, Jarrell displays the speaker’s transition into an emotionless soldier at the manipulative hand of the government. At the beginning
The poems Remains, by Simon Armitage and War Photographer, by Carol Anne Duffy both discuss the topic of war. In both poems, you can see how war affects people and how memories of what they have seen haunt them forever. In War Photographer, attempts are made to put order to the chaos created by war, unlike Remains, which shows how chaos is created. The theme of war is present in both poems as something to be remembered. However the memories are unwanted and the reader sees them turn into nightmares.
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
Trethewey immediately uses imagery to set the scene inviting your senses to help illustrate the image she has already relayed. This helped depict a more in-depth image of her poem “elegy”. After reading this poem several times, to build understanding, and break down literary elements; I came to the conclusion that Trethewey emphasizes the struggle to find balance. The balance between metaphor and symbolism, increasing throughout the entire poem showing battle between connotation and detonation. The struggle in which she used to connotation to portray the bigger picture, but also balanced out by denotation to show the subliminal messages of the relationship shared between the narrator’s father and herself.
Effectively, Daghett communicates that the myths spread about the humanitarianism of the Gulf War could quickly be dispelled by this single photograph. She then informs the reader about the intense restrictions placed on the press, “...by the time the Gulf War started, the Pentagon had developed access policies that drew on press restrictions used in the U.S. wars in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s.” (Daghett 3) This information greatly bolsters Daghett’s argument as it leaves the reader wondering what information and imagery has been kept from them and why? Throughout the next few paragraphs Daghett is able to prey on the reader’s sympathies, by using examples of the extreme lengths photographers went to, so as to capture the war through their lenses.
In DeGhett’s essay, The War Photo No One Would Publish, DeGhett constructs an argument around the censorship of wartime media. DeGhett does so by illustrating an image of the horrifying consequences of war specifically in the Gulf War through a chilling photo of a burned Iranian solider. The argument evolves from the possible impact of a single photo to the moral problems of over censorship in media. This argument is in opposition to the argument that censorship is for the protection of the audience. Instead DeGhett’s essay makes the overall argument that the truth of war was being hidden from the American people.
There is no doubt that both of these poems are fantastic at representing both sides of the argument, with "Dulce et Decorum est" tries to negatively change how you view wars and "The Things that Make a Soldier Great" trying to clear up any misunderstanding regarding
Vianne’s experiences, her life, her friends and family, the person she used to be, have died as the war continued. This metaphor of a captures the destruction caused by
Just by reading the title of Philip Levine’s poem, “They Feed They Lion”, the reader is already given the implication that the poem may be somewhat cryptic to the non-analytic eye. After analyzing the title carefully, it becomes clear that the author was implying that the lion is a symbol for something bad. Just by deciphering this, one can deduce that the title is a metaphor for a group of people feeding into the said thing that is bad. Once the reader reads the poem several times though, it becomes painstakingly clear that the lion that Levine is talking about is the unprecedented hate that is so ingrained into human nature. A part of human nature that most members of the human race constantly feed into without fail.
Comparative Essay How can different perceptions about one topic be expressed in poetry? The main theme that the two sets of poems convey is war, but it’s expressed in different point of views through the use of diction that builds tone. The tones of these poems play a big role in conveying the differences between the different eras that these poems are written in, and shows how societies have changed from the Victorian era till the time of World War I. The diction and tone in Borden and Owen’s poems is so much different than the diction and tone in Lovelace and Tennyson’s poems due to different perspectives and point of views. In all four poems the main idea is war, but each set conveys a perspective of war, a positive perspective
Nothing But Death Analysis. Nothing But Death, The poem from Pablo Neruda translated and edited by Robert Bly. The poem presented about the looks of the Death and about how the death appears around the human.
Edward Estlin Cummings is one of the most famous American poets of the 20th century. He uses words to “point[] to a reality outside themselves” and on the contrary claims “the only reality is language itself” . He is well known for his disregard of traditional poetic expression, and tendency to invent words. The poem Love is more thicker than forget has 16 lines, which are separated into 4 stanzas.
Most people can understand that when a soldier comes back from war, he is not going to be the same. He has seen too much and done too much to still be the innocent boy he had been. In the novel, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, he not only puts the effect of war for soldiers, but for regular civilians as well. The novel is saying that war affects females even though they could not fight in war. The message is conveyed through female characters that have felt sorrow and emptiness during and after the war.
Firstly within the poems, both Owen and Harrison present the horrific images of war through use of visual imagery. “And leaped of purple spurted his thigh” is stated. Owen describes the immediate action of presenting the truth of war as horrific and terrifying . The phrase “purple spurted” represents the odd color of the blood which was shedded as the boulder from the bomb smashed his leg in a matter of seconds. The readers
“Lament” is written in 7 stanzas, with 3 lines per stanza. In the first stanza, Clarke laments for the pregnant green turtle, which lays “her eggs” in a “nest of sickness”. “Her” is used stimulating a more personal feeling of maternity. Clarke uses the term “nest” in an ironic way.