Mametz Wood - analysis Flashcards
‘Mamet Wood’
- wood near village of Mametz in Northern France
‘For years afterwards’
opening lines emphasise how deadly the battle was as they found remains ‘years afterwards’
‘farmers found them’ = fricative alliteration
‘wasted young’
adjective suggests young soldiers lost their lives before they really started living. lives weren’t taken seriously, careless due to bad military plan without thoughts of human cost
‘they tended the land back’
verb personifies the land suggesting the farmers tried to care for the wounded surface that was so badly damaged by war.
(enjambment in this poem mimics the turning of soil in first stanza)
‘A chit of bone’
‘A chit’ is a short note and indicates these pieces of bone contains a message for us of the brutalities of war
‘china plate’ ‘broken bird’s egg’
metaphors emphasise his fragile + precious the human body is
‘flint’
bones look like rocks in the soil/field
‘they were told to walk,not run,’
- the command creates a cynical tone to the poem. the poet clearly felt the orders sent the soldiers to their deaths
- A03: link to commands. walk at set pace, don’t help conrad’s if they get injured
‘nesting machine guns’
- Germans protecting their position
- waiting to kill
‘stands sentinel’
noun ‘sentinel’ links back to soldiers standing watch all night and suggests the land cannot rest due to the horrors sent in war
‘reaching back into itself’
- nature offended
- stanza 4 personifies land
‘like a wound working a foreign body’
simile suggests the land is trying to cleanse itself of the damage that’s been done
it emphasises how the bodies aren’t supposed to be there. it’s unnatural. they’ve died so young
‘This morning’
turning point: poem switches from earth to talking about bodies. switches to present tense, tragedy more immediate and real for reader. horrors of war still felt today + reminded of fatal consequences of war
‘broken mosaic’
noun suggests intricate and beautiful nature of human body but it is broken
‘linked arm in arm’
suggests soldiers close as a division and stayed together as a team even in death
‘skeletons paused mid dance-màcabre’
image of skeletons dancing creates dark humour, but also reminds us of the soldiers as living beings. death dancing people to afterlife
‘they had sung’
soldiers sang to keep their spirits up in darker moments of war. Welsh divisions known for their songs. contrasts violence of war. bird imagery (link to stanza 2)
‘absent tongues’
final stanza creates haunting tone. adjective ‘absent’ suggests men’s voices were lost in battle - they were silenced by their generals and then the machine guns. Only now “with this unearthing” truth is emerging
‘socketed heads’
vivid and disturbing image reminds reader that they have decayed
‘those that have them’
parenthesis reminds the reader of soldier’s injuries
‘dropped open’
suggests they were shouting or their mouths were open in horror
