Vergissmeinicht Flashcards
Author’s opinion on plunder expressed in the poem
“Look. Here in the gunpoint spoil”
Douglas condemns the plundering nature of war
- The imperative ‘look’ shows triumphant tone and excitemnet as they find something dear to the soldier
- Imagery of ‘gunpoint spoil’ and plunder by the victor reveals the densensitising nature of war-narrator’s triumph at items which are only important for the dead soldier
Description of what happened to the soldier’s body
‘The dust upon the paper eye/and the burst stomach like a cave’
- visual imagery of burst stomach like cave, the adjective burst is EXPLOSIVE and onomateopoeic, conveys the violence of war
- Simile, like a cave shows gruesome detail, illustrating horrible reality of war and the vulnerability/cheapness of the human body + emptiness
-Describing an eye as paper shows the fragility of the solder and how delicate he is in the aftermath of war showing how destructive war is.
Description of the dead soldier’s equipment
‘Mocked by his own equipment/that’s hard and good when he’s decayed’
- Personfication of equipment - ‘mocked’ denotes human hierachy so placing equipment above soldier
- Shows the hopelessness and powerlessness of the soldier as equiment he should be controlling is mocking - something so reliable has turned against him almost like an act of betrayal which is commonly seen in war
- Imagery of his equipment that is ‘hard’ and ‘good’ is a tasteless sign of sexual euphemisim that shows the narrators heartless gloating especially in relation to his girl
- Used as a symbol of life and vitality
-Describing his equipment as his own shows the deep connection between the soldier and his equipment however the equpiment mocked him showing how war has corrupted the equipment into becoming traitorous nature
Description of a dead soldier on the battlefield
‘Found the soldier sprawling in the sun’
- definite article ‘the’ confirms the narrators intention in his search for a specific soldier
‘sprawling’ has connotations of happiness, satisfaction and relaxation rendered unsettling by the sibilance which contrasts as you hear the flesh decomposing contrasting death and happineness - Death is the ultimate relaxation
“Sprawling” also shows his position and is given no dignity in death
description of gun shadow frown
‘The frowning barrel of his gun/overshadowing’
- violence of guns which exist to kill
- personificiation of weapon as ‘frowning’ connotating displeasure at the sight of the soldier’s death rendering the gun powerless
- The continous verb of ‘overshadowing’ conveys enduring feeling of menace
Demon
‘Like the entry of a demon’
- By comparing the bullet to a ‘demon’ presents overwhelming nature of war aswell as how strong and horrifying and hell like war is in reality
Description of what the narrator is feeling when he sees the soldier he killed
We see him almost with content, abased’
Tense change, the present here further emphasises the soldier’s death and the narrators life
- ‘abased’ shows he is jubilant at his victory and wants satisfaction from his death ‘content’
- Adverb, ‘almost’ shows narrator on the verge of moral corruption
- feeling densitised over nature of war
Description of the battlefield in VGMN
‘returning over the nightmare ground/we found the place again’
- Metpahor of ‘nightmare ground’ shows the hellish nature of the battlefield LNK demon bullet
- ‘We’ is a plural pronoun indicating that others have the same opinion as him, amplifying the hellish feeling
