What have they done to you? Flashcards
Alliteration. The everyday workers have become hypnotised into being obedient and doing as society wishes. They have had a loss of heart. Striking opening
What have they done to you, men of the masses, creeping back and forth to work?
Upper class people put on pedestals for supposedly saving the workers but really conditions are still horrific and they are just gaining a profit from the workers
the saviours of the people, oh what have they saved you from,
while they pocketed the money?
Sarcasm. Personification. Industry has torn them apart and rebuilt them in the structure that fits society of the new age. They only seem like saviours
they have save you from yourself, from your own frail dangers
and devoured you with the machine, the vast maw of iron
People left their country homes and farms just to be placed in tiny homes in cities without freedom
embedded you in workmen’s dwellings
Pun. Their payment is given to them for their work but it is for this money that people are becoming unimportant and empty/devoid of thoughts and emptions
your wage is the dole of work, and the
dole is your wage of nullity.
They stole their identity and personality with this work and new society.
oh they took away your man’s native instincts and intuitions
Instead of individualism, they are one and the same due to their educations and the propaganda in newspapers and the cinema saying their lives are better
gave you a board-school education, newspapers, and the cinema
They are void of identity, originality and initiative. Grotesque imagery as they are left to be zombies that simply work but with no joys in life anymore
They stole your bodies from you, and left you an animated carcass
The education they are given and the newspapers they read do not give them the opportunity to expand their minds. There is no room for anything else in their heads but the gossip n the papers
a board-school brain, stuffed up with the ha’penny press.
Use of 3 to effectively depict how inhumane people have become. There is nothing left for them to possibly live a fulfilled life with.
Your instincts gone, your intuitions gone, your passions dead
Repetition of rhetorical questions sums up Lawrence’s frustration and despair. He is horrified at what humankind has become. Capital ‘O’ reiterates his exasperation
what have they done to you, what have they done to you, Oh what have they done to you?
Lawrence seems vulnerable and lost. Doesn’t know how to help or what to do to change society. Almost a plea for help
Oh look at my fellow-men, oh look at them
the masses! Oh, what has been done to them?
