War Photographer

1581 Words4 Pages

‘’War Photographer’’ is a thought-provoking and mind gripping poem by Carol Ann Duffy. The poem revolves around the life of the photographer as he juggles between his two personas as he try to develop his photos and reminisce about the war torn countries, all the innocent people and the horrific and gory things he has witnessed. As the poem progresses and the pictures begin to develop the memories of pain and suffering from his past starts to unravel and becomes clearer and clearer. The main message the writer is trying to convey is the fact that through modern times news about the war is being published by the media in a truthful way that people feel less sympathy towards the innocent lives of the people dying all around the world. The writer effectively raises questions about our feelings and emotions that we feel towards war and death.

Throughout the poem, the photographer’s feelings have been very clear and changes as he snaps back and forth of reality and past memories. ‘’With spools of suffering’’ is an alliteration used in line 2 to draw an imagery of the spools as well as personification by giving them feelings of suffering which an inanimate object can’t feel. It shows that each stage and object that he uses to take the photographs brings back so much memories and all the feelings of detachment, sadness and anger: ‘’A hundred agonies in black-and-white’’. The deeper meaning to this quote is that the writer feels contempt and anger towards the public and how nobody cares about the individual person that died but instead looks at them as a whole, they become insignificant because of they’re great number.

The feeling of detachment would probably be the main emotion in the poem as the photographer does his best not to g...

... middle of paper ...

...is probably dead. Finally, in the fourth stanza, the photos are finally developed properly and he can see and recapture everything he saw during those pictures where taken.

Lastly, the overall message of this poem is that people through modern times doesn’t think about the people suffering in wars, hey don’t care enough. It makes us question on how we should act and how this affects our lives. Should we care more and sympathise about those that are dying, those that are innocent and suffering? This poem was very successful in making me re think about my emotions towards the was and it definitely made me look at the war photographer in a better light as they put their lives at risk to keep us posted on what’s happening overseas. This was cleverly written and Duffy’s emotions really showed about how she is disappointed and frustrated on how we look at war and death.

Open Document