Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Commentary Escape
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Comparison of "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "The General""
Top Ten Reasons You Want to be Jake
Commentary "Trench duty"
- Shows how awful the war was. Makes the tone sadder. Makes the audience feel how terrible the war was, and how fast situations changed (how fast things change can also be seen in how short the poem is, he wakes up and then someones dead)
- Battle/war diction-"Trench," "Bombardment," "Raid," "Wire," "Sniper fire," "Killed," "dead,"
- Violent/unpleasant diction- "Shaken," "numbed," "Gruff," "horror," "stiff and chilled"
- Sudden changes "Gruff muttering voices" to "Big bombardment," and "I'm wide awake and some chaps dead"
- Contrasts heavily with the diction of the poem, this makes how terrible the war was even worse because it is singsong-y.
- AABBCCDDEFEFGG
- This makes the poem sound like a children nursery rhyme
- Makes it feel happy but the diction is horrifying and sad
- Contrasts heavily with the poem
- "Trench Duty"
- What soldiers have to do
- Survive and live with death around them and so close to them
Comparison
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Greater Love
""
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Memories
The poem “Repression of War Experiences” by Siegfried Sassoon talks about a man who is having trouble keeping the memories of war from taking over his life. The speaker, the different diction and several metaphors used in this poem enhance the tone of “Repression of War Experiences” to a point where the audience can really feel the man’s periodic panic and calm as he descends into madness.
In the poem “Repression of War Experiences” the speaker is a man who has obviously experienced war and is trying to repress it like the title suggests. Because the speaker is the man who is slowly losing it the audience experiences the raw emotion coming from the author about the pain that he is trying to repress. As a result of this onslaught of emotion the connection between the speaker and the audience is immediate and you are drawn into the poem further. As the speaker is struggling with the war experiences, it feels as if we are privy to his inner thoughts as he slowly deteriorates.
The diction in this poem changes between panicked diction and calm. The calm diction that is used gives that poem a calm that feels forced in a way because it is coupled with bursts of panic. The calm diction in this poem is predominantly in the beginning of each section. The calming diction in the first section is how they are short and not complex, “Now light the candles; one ; two…” This also appears to relax the man until the third line where the diction becomes more panicked as does the tone. The panicked diction is also darker as he begins to talk about “gagged,” going mad, “ugly thoughts,” “jabber.” All of these words make the reader feel as if the man is becoming panicked which is reflected in the tone and felt by the readers. Similar diction is used in the third section where the diction becomes more extreme. At the beginning of the third section the diction is quite calm as he focuses on the books being “jolly company” as well as “quiet and patient.” This word are quite calming as well as relatively happy, whereas near the end of the section “breathless air,” “ghosts,” “gnaw,” “ugly,” and “nasty” is darker diction as the tone of the poem gets darker and more frantic and the mad delves back into the painful memories.
The metaphors in this poem are quite interesting because the man first speaks about things literally and then suddenly flows into what they mean figuratively. For example, in the first section the Sassoon says that “Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth; what silly beggars they are to blunder in and scorch their wings with glory,” as he tells us that there is a moth he slowly trickles into its representation in the war. Because of this direct connection made by the speaker it is apparent that the war is not staying repressed as he wants it too, but rather pushing forward through common occurrences.
The tone in this poem is very important and it enhanced from many different places. The tone in “Repression of War Experiences” changes significantly throughout the poem. In the first few sections it appears to be calm to small bouts of panic and then to a forced calm that he struggles for. However by the last section of the poem it is apparent that he has slowly been losing the battle with his war memories and they are now coming back because it begins calm and reassuring and then jumps directly to extreme panic and madness.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Nonsense
"The Bough of Nonsense" by Robert Graves was written in reaction to WWI. More specifically Graves talks about the Battle of Somme. In this poem Graves talks about how immensity of the war and the damage it did, while also showing how sensitive the soldiers who did survive were afterwards. Grave achieves this predominantly through his use of imagery and metaphor.
The metaphors in "The Bough of Nonsense" emphasize the pain that the soldiers felt, and the also explain the causes of the pain. The main metaphor in the poem is that the war is nonsense in some sense. Because nonsense gives birth to “thirteen squamous young” the nonsense is negative and has caused destruction and pain. Also the “nest” that the creature has is made of “skulls and flowers,” these images help the metaphor of nonsense being war because war is focused on death, while flowers contrast with it. Further into the poem Graves introduces “temples” these temple represent different things. The first temple that is mentioned appears to describe the warfare and specifically the trench warfare, this is because the soldiers who went in seldom came back out like in the temple who “disappears from sight and leaves no trace.” The second temple appears to represent the people of authority deciding where to send soldiers. This is seen because they are first described as Galatians which are people far from where the two soldiers are at the moment. This means that Graves felt that the commanders were far away from the actual battles. And the temple built on sense was the strategies that they used against technology that made them obsolete. These changes in warfare in WWI were the walls of nonsense that held of the roof of logic. All of these references to temples generally appear to be negative, this is reflecting the feeling of many of the soldiers that felt that God had abandoned them. This feeling was a large part of what it was to be part of the lost generation.*
The diction in "The Bough of Nonsense" helps further the idea that the soldiers cannot handle the war and must push it back in their minds. However the imagery also makes it clear things that happened during the war and their effect on the soldiers. In the poem the contrasting diction makes it appear like they are actually speaking nonsensically. First they describe this impossible creature that is “hatching three eggs; and the next year… foaled thirteen squamous young…”. Because of the diction in this section we can begin to understand some of the nonsense that the soldiers are speaking. Firstly thirteen is traditionally an un-lucky number, and then the creature gives birth to scaled* young, reptiles traditionally have a negative connotation as well. Because of the diction we have a negative image. However the nonsense that the two soldiers speak in helps them keep the war at bay in their minds. This can be understood because the nonsense diction veils the war while first keeping it like a story but underneath telling the reader that the war was terrible. If we assume that some of the nonsense that they say directly relates to WWI and more specifically the Battle of Somme. The end of the poem also has some interesting diction that tells us that the author knows that the war isn’t over. “While phantom creatures with green scales scramble and roll among the trees,” displays that fear that the soldiers still have because war is still on the loose.
*"covered with or formed of squamae or scales." - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/squamous
*http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lost-gen.html