mametz wood

Question 1

what is the main theme in mametz wood

Answer 1

war.

Question 2

what is the poem an elegy for

Answer 2

lost lives.

gives voice to skeletons with ‘absent tongues’ - more than statistics.

Question 3

what is the main context for mametz wood

Answer 3

episode of world war one - 4000 welsh soldiers killed. it was one of the bloodiest battles.

poor leadership during the battle led to grief and injustice after the event.

Question 4

for years afterwards the farmers found them

Answer 4

middle of telling a story so trying to stimulate the readers interest.

soldiers no longer have identity - they are passive and powerless.

Question 5

the wasted young turning up under their plough blades

Answer 5

poignant phase - it has dramatic significance of the soldiers.

destructive imagery symbolising the effects of war.

Question 6

as they tended the land back into itself

Answer 6

sentimental - contrasts destructive imagery.

Question 7

a chit of bone the china plate of a shoulder blade

Answer 7

onomatopoeia could be symbolic of the machine guns.

Question 8

and broken bird egg of a skull

Answer 8

juxtaposes the destructive force of war.

this is delicate and fragile as opposed to violence and aggression.

Question 9

where is where a sematic field of death in stanza two

Answer 9

‘shoulder blade’ and ‘skull’

Question 10

across this field where they were told to walk not run

Answer 10

walking is more calm and collective which juxtaposes the commanders lack of respect for vulnerable lives.

Question 11

reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened

Answer 11

this is personification for protecting the men.

there is a sense of longing and returning to the past.

Question 12

like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin

Answer 12

suggesting that war is like an illness but is also significant also in the sense that these were welsh boys fighting in a foreign country and the fire that wounded them came from foreign guns.

Question 13

this morning twenty men buried in one long grave

Answer 13

this breaks the flow and pace of the poem and suggests that the impacts of the war are still felt today.

allows the reader to feel a sense of dramatic reality.

Question 14

a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm

Answer 14

festive and supporting each other through death - comradeship.

however it also symbolises the complete destruction of the soldiers.

Question 15

what is the significance of stanza five

Answer 15

moving and powerful dramatic climax.

Question 16

in the boots that outlasted them

Answer 16

constant reference to their breakdown.

Question 17

and their jaws those that had them dropped open

Answer 17

unsettling imagery emphasising the destruction of war.

Question 18

as if the notes they had sung

Answer 18

giving soldiers a voice and purpose.

there was strong tradition in welsh culture of singing. people are brought up surrounded by music which is an essential part of their cultural identity. this is ironic given that in death these soldiers lost those very individual identities.

Question 19

have only now with this unearthing

Answer 19

freedom and release of the soldiers.

Question 20

slipped from their absent tongues

Answer 20

the ‘absent tongues’ have been silenced for a century but now the dead are finally able to communicate with the living. and they do so with ease - the words ‘slipped’ from them - as if the men and their stories are unified.

Question 21

what is the use of enjambment and caesura do in this poem

Answer 21

help to create a slow and reflective tone.

Question 22

what is the use of fragmented tercets in this poem

Answer 22

could represent the remains of soldiers.