What Were They Like?(Quotes / context)

form question and answer

two stanzas: one question, one answer

volta in between

sets up two imaginary characters.

two imaginary characters. one ignorant one not.

the answerer is being respectful by answering the questions

“sir” suggests the power difference.

“What Were They Like?”

Past tense by the verb “were”

They and There are in the whole poem.

creates a separation and representative of conflict.

indicates that nobody of the culture can answer their questions by the unknowingness and as if its forgotten. The answerer doesn’t even know.

the title is a rhetorical question.

“Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth”

plosive of “b”

shortest answer in whole poem which shows its insensitive

blunt, open for elaboration. (napalm) 

“It is not remembered. Remember”

repetition 

second remember is almost a double entendre imperative. “remember most were peasants” and the caesura and the imperative, encourages the reader to remember the consequences of war.

Written during the Vietnam war. Dystopian future. Consequential.

“Who can say? It is silent now,”

rhetorical question.

sibilance reflects silence.

Finishing line, the silence that comes after the final line for the reader and for the end of war because there is no one left.

Levertov context

political poet

nurse in ww2

was anti war

Born in ESSEX

moved to the united states post ww2

poem context

1967 published

during the height of the conflict over the Vietnam war which was controversial.