Mametz Wood Flashcards
Context
“Slipped from their absent tongues” - muted consonants, very soft sounding ; this poem is partially the song they never got to sing
Finally acknowledges their bravery and sacrifice of the 38th Welsh a infantry Division at the battle of the Somme - bloodies battle of WW1 (1916) ; futile deaths given proper recognition (redemptive stanza) ; honours these brave men (pays homage)
Structure
Tercets which are unrhymed and in blank verse - in order to communicate how war has no beauty (trying to achieve a similar affect to Wilfred Owen yet with a different style)
Alternating theme of each stanza - land/soldiers/soldier ; lays respect to the land where they were found too
Architecturally speaking they are laid out very plainly as stanzas with no variation - maybe a sign of respect? ; repetition
Language and Imagery
Verb “wasted” - the promise and adhulthood they dreamed of was just emergency wasted in battle ; whole future of these young men just gone (similar to verb “flung”)
“Farmers found” - soft consonants ; highlights to the reader that it is a contemplative and delicate poem (contrasts with harshness of “knock kneed” - much more brutal depiction)
“Sentinel” - image of the land throwing up these soldiers on purpose to make us acknowledge their bravery - implying that it is a therapeutic process (“foreign body” - lack of repatriation)
Effort in the verb “working” portrays an image of healing and suggests this process of uncovering an overlooked past can rehabilitate the dead in the mind of the living, giving them a voice in the present
Stanza 5 and 6 closest Sheers gets to horror Owen describes
Image of “mosaics” - they have all been fragmented
Bizarre grim image of the “dance-macabre” is made more unsettling by the fact their boots have outlasted them + “socketed” emotive language and a horrifying detail
Out of the previous stanza full of gruesome detail and suffering - sheers manages to create a final redemptive stanza where the futile deaths and suffering are given the proper recognition they deserve
Owen has a very partisan approach - does not deny the concept of death in Brooke’s feeble poem ; acknowledge the horrors and agony the soldiers go through but with a very delicate approach (unlike Dulce - much more visceral and explicit)
Violent contrast to much harsher sounds with “chit” and “skull” - adds a sense of fragility to the poem too
“Broken birds egg of a skull” - beautiful image ; on a physical level shows brittles of skull against gunfire (similar to Dulce’s graphic imagery) BUT painfully contrasts the idea of life being started before it has ended - reinforces the plosives of “birds egg” ; barely fledged life
“Told to walk not run” - distressing reminder of the mens’ courage in the face of enemy fire
“Nesting” - another example of the fusion of opposite ideas (antithesis) as nests create a sense of protection for new born but also home for the concealed machine guns
Overview
Imagery is particularly important and evokes coinciding themes of birth and death in order to rehabilitate the soldiers in the mind of the living and finally give them a voice they never had (a healing process)
