Upton Sinclair's 'After The Retreat'

Influencing the flow and rhythm of her poetry is Sinclair's distinctive usage of a stream of consciousness writing style that presents her poetic pieces as an uninterrupted flow of her unfiltered and genuine thoughts on the war to her audience. Sinclair's poem, "After the Retreat", revolves around the normalcy of a house that she is haunted by and continuously dreams of, as opposed to the memories of bloodshed and wounded in ruined cities such as Flanders. In one section of the poem, Sinclair writes, "At night I cannot sleep in England here / But I get up, and I go / Not to the cities of Flanders / If I could only see again / The house we passed that day" (Sinclair 20-29). The stream of consciousness writing style that is used throughout this

In this light, the audience is exposed to the conflicting feelings that Sinclair had during WWI. Though she loved the excitement and novelty of being able to forge her own path and experience the war as more than a simple observer, Sinclair also recognized how depressing and sorrowful the war was. Ironically, out of the all the wounded individuals that she helps throughout the fighting, she does not remember the graphic injuries inflicted upon the wounded-she is conflicted instead because she clearly remembers the normalcy of a house that stood apart from the shrapnel and destruction found throughout the battlefield. In "Dedication", Sinclair once again relies on a stream of consciousness flow when she says, "But you she loved / You she touched with her hand / She kept you with her in her fields of Flanders / Where you go" (Sinclair 18-22). This instance of stream of consciousness writing highlights the disappointment and betrayal that were in Sinclair's thoughts when she wrote about how her ambulance corps was able to continue their work in Flanders where she did not return