The Sentry

What person is it written in?

What person is it written in?

First

What does it describe?

A harrowing experience in the trenches focusing on the speakers traumatic encounter with a fellow soldier who is severely injured

What is a sentry?

A solider who guards a place by standing at its entrance

Role of observation

Where was it written?

Craig Lockhart

What is the tone? And what is the effect?

Informal and colloquial

Effect: shows it is a everyday occurrence, we feel confided in

Examples of colloquialism

‘Boche’

‘Sending a scout to beg a stretcher somewhere’

‘Whizz bangs”

“Crumps”

Religious imagery examples

‘Gave us hell’

‘Snuffing the candles’

Menacing nature of Germans

‘And he knew, and gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell’

‘But one found our door at last’

Relentlessness of war

for shell on frantic shell’

‘Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour’

‘But one found our door at last’

‘But I forgot him there’

Danger of war

‘Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime, Kept slush waist high that rising hour by hour”

“Snuffing the candles”

Inescapable nature of war

‘Chocked up the steps too thick with clay to climb’

Duty

‘But I forgot him there’

In posting next for duty

Conditions of war

‘And the smell of men who’d lived there years and left their curse in the den, if not their corpses…’

Physical suffering

‘O sir, my eyes - I’m blind - I’m blind, I’m blind!”

Ro3, frantic tone

Fragmented speech

Exclamation

He is distraught!

“He sobbed”

Zoom out

“Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed“

Shows the collective suffering of everyone

This pathos evoked previously form the sentry is expanded

Dehumanisation of soldiers

‘There we herded from the blast’ - zoomorphism

‘Then came the sentry’s body; then his rifle, handles of old boche bombs’

‘We dredged it up, for dead, until he whined’

‘ sending a scout to beg a stretcher somewhere’

‘Those other wretches”

‘Herded’

1. Dehumanisation, zoomorphism

2. Controlled

3. Comradeship - they have assembled to protect each other

6. due to them being controlled and dehumanised, something good came from bad thing!

Comradeship

“There we herded from the blast”

“Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids and said if he could see the least blurred light he was not blind; in time he’d get alright”

Hope

“Snuffing the candles” - lack of hope

“But ours had long died out”

“Held a flame against his lids”

psychological suffering

“I try not to remember these things”

“Watches my dreams still”

“To that sentry’s moans and jumps, and the wild chattering of his broken teeth”

“Renewed most horribly”

“But ours had long died out”

• loss of morale

• Loss of hope

• Foreshadows death

• Dichotomy = mental turmoil

Eye Imagery

‘Eyeballs, huge bulged like squid’s’

‘Buffeting eyes and breath’

‘O sir, my eyes - I’m blind - I’m blind, I’m blind!”