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