Lauren Kim
IBH Literature
Ms. Wiebusch
May 21, 2014
Question Paper: “Last Post”
What is the significance of the title? Does it refer to the short tune that British people played through instruments to commemorate those last at war? Why does Duffy cite the lines from Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Own for the first two sentences? Is she using juxtaposition to compare her perspective of the soldiers and that of Wilfred Owen? Or is it to create an image of the battlefields in the readers’ mind? Why does Duffy start the poem with the line “if poetry could tell it backwards” (3)? Does she travel backwards in time? If so, then is “tell it backwards” allude to how she imagines the soldiers if the war did not happen? Why does Duffy introduce the “moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud” (4)? Does the “shrapnel” indicate that there was possibly a bombardment or explosion at the site of the battlefield? Does the poet take the word “scythed” to make use of consonance of the “s” with “shrapnel”? Is she indirectly presenting the trenches as she describes the “stinking mud”? Who is the “you” referring to in this poem? Is it Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, the survivors of World War I? Why does Duffy state “you watch bled bad blood run upwards from the slime into its wounds” (5-6)? Is “bled bad blood” another use of consonance within the poem? Is Duffy emphasizing that time is traveling backwards as she depicts the blood going “upwards” and back “into its wounds”? Why does the poet portray the soldiers before the death as she “rewind” (7) them “back to their trenches” (8)? Is she stressing the potential life the “British boys” (7) might have had if they had survived the war? That they would be able to go back home and see their famil...
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...lities of experiences and future that the lost lives might have had? Does the word “crammed” (27) stress that there were many potential futures in ready for them? Why does “the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile” (28)? Is “the poet” indicating Duffy? If so, then is she smiling because she feels satisfaction and joy through her articulation of the illusory lives of the dead veterans? Why does she repeat the first line of the first stanza in the next line? Is it to come to a conclusion? One difference is the incorporation of the word “truly” (29); does this imply a shift in the poem? Is the author coming back to reality that the history can’t be changed as she states “then it would” (30)? So, is the shift at the end of the poem an acceptance of the lost lives?
Works Cited
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Last Post”. The Guardian. Friday July 31, 2009. Web.
Works Cited
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In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’. Owen, throughout the poem, creates the impression of the trenches for the reader and stanza one helps to set the scene. The soldiers, who have been fighting for a long time in the trenches, are finally returning to their billets to rest. The exhaustion of the men is shown here through similes which compare the men to old beggars and hags, ‘like beggars under sacks’ and ‘coughing like hags’, although they were young men, showing just how exhausted they were and the effects the war is having on them physically. Also, the men are ‘blood-shod’ which makes them seem more like horses than human beings. Owen also uses metaphors in stanza one to describe the terrible tiredness the men were suffering from, ‘men marched asleep’. The stanza describes how the poor conditions of the trenches are putting a strain on the soldiers, until they are ‘knock-kneed’ and having to ‘trudge’ through the ‘sludge’ to get to their place of rest. They are ‘drunk with fatigue’ and limping with wounds or loss of boots. This stanza also illustrates the ...
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” makes the reader acutely aware of the impact of war. The speaker’s experiences with war are vivid and terrible. Through the themes of the poem, his language choices, and contrasting the pleasant title preceding the disturbing content of the poem, he brings attention to his views on war while during the midst of one himself. Owen uses symbolism in form and language to illustrate the horrors the speaker and his comrades go through; and the way he describes the soldiers, as though they are distorted and damaged, parallels how the speaker’s mind is violated and haunted by war.
The poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen portrays the horrors of World War I with the horrific imagery and the startling use of words he uses. He describes his experience of a gas attack where he lost a member of his squadron and the lasting impact it had on him. He describes how terrible the conditions were for the soldiers and just how bad it was. By doing this he is trying to help stop other soldiers from experiencing what happened in a shortage of time.