english - power and conflict

quotations

but nothing happens

exposure: repetition, boredom, futility of war , half line ,

our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knive us…

exposure: nature personified as the enemy, collective voice, suffering and confusion, ellipses - waiting, brutality, sibilance - freezing + intense pain

like twitching agonies of men amongst its brambles

exposure: brambles - cruelty of natures = barbed wire, brambles = blackberries - blood, simile

dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

exposure: nature = enemy, military rhetoric, dawn = military general, dawn = light and hope, metaphor for storm clouds

sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence

exposure: sibilance - mimics bullets, less deadly than air - subverts expectations and presents weather as the enemy

probably armed, possibly not

remains: uncertain, modality, doubt, guilt, repeated - doubt + cant forget,

i see every round as it rips through his life

remains: violence, brutality , i see - sensory visual horror, present tense - constant

his bloody life in my bloody hands

remains: finality, violence, guilt, frustration - mild expletive,

and the drink and the drug wont flush him out

remains: ptsd, desperation, memory, flush - needs to be disposed/cleansed, harrowing memories ,numb, self destruction, guilt

dug in behind enemy lines

remains: haunts him, military terms - semantic field of war, infiltrated his memory , cant escape

suddenly he awoke and was running

bayonet charge: abrupt, in medias res, implies sleep - exaggerates suddenness, confusion- vulnerable, immediate - no thought/autonomy, metaphorical - realisation( patriotism, propaganda)

a green hedge that dazzled with rifle fire

bayonet charge: blinding, violence- active gunfight, disorientation - green hedge = soldiers, blinded by brainwashing/shock, nature overthrown by war

bullets smacking the belly out of the air

bayonet charge: violence, auditory/onomatopoeia, personifies nature,

in what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations / was he the hand pointing the second?

bayonet charge - lack of autonomy, hand - symbol of power/control, used as a tool - represent a greater mechanism, careless, country = cold+unfeeling, alliteration - clock sound, war = fated but repetitive

king, honour, human dignity, etcetera / dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm

bayonet charge: cant afford ideals, etc - no point listing, futile , ideas used to promote war, attacking out of desperation - no morals,

his terrors touchy dynamite

bayonet charge: become a weapon driven by terror, fear, volatile, emotional, destruction

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows

war photographer: attempt to make sens eof the horrot, camera film, sibilance - secret/personal, reminiscient of a graveyard, almost holy, paradox chaos+suffering vs order

all flesh is grass

war photographer - biblical refrence, life is precious but transient,

his hands which did not tremble then seem to now

war photographer: irony, fear, anxiety, desensitised, detached , haunted by memories

home again to ordinary pain

war photographer: oxymoron, frequency, compares extreme suffering in war zones to mundane issues in rural england

running children in a nightmare heat

war photographer: reference to ‘napalm girl’ photo, napalm - torture pain destruction, innocence, playing vs fear , emotive

half - formed ghost

war photographer - incomplete photo, dying, shadow/unclear, suggests mutilation, makes it personal - emphasising suffering in war

a hundred agonies in black and white

war photographer: emotive metaphor, solidifies suffering,