Mametz Wood Flashcards
Mametz Wood - A chit of bone, the China plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird’s egg of a skull.
Listing of body parts and comparison of fragile things emphasises destruction. Juxtaposition of life and death shows the destructive force that is war.
Mametz Wood - Reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body
Vague language emphasises how the war atrocities are too terrible to think about. Hopeful imagery, wounds heal.
Mametz Wood - This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone
Time mentions that war is felt today. The soldiers are completely broken, however their death created something beautiful, freedom.
Mametz Wood - Their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.
Shocking images show the brutality and waste of war. Repetition of plosive sounds (t, k, b, d, g) mimic the gun fire that tilted their heads back. Embedded clause continues the destruction of war.
