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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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.
Through the use of dramatic imagery in Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen is able to recreate a dramatic war scene and put the reader right on the front lines. The use of language is very effective in garnering the readers’ attention and putting the dire images of war into the mind. He emphasizes that war is upsetting and appalling at times. There is nothing sweet about it. He only strengthens his argument by the use of strong descriptive words and vivid figurative language. The utilization of these techniques gives the poem a strong meaning and provides the reader with a vivid portrayal of the events that took place during this grisly occurrence.
Did I Miss Anything? is a poem written by a Canadian poet and academic Tom Wayman. Being a teacher, he creates a piece of literature, where he considers the answers given by a teacher on one and the same question asked by a student, who frequently misses a class. So, there are two speakers present in it – a teacher and a student. The first one is fully presented in the poem and the second one exists only in the title of it. The speakers immediately place the reader in the appropriate setting, where the actions of a poem take place – a regular classroom. Moreover, the speakers unfolds the main theme of the poem – a hardship of being a teacher, the importance of education and laziness, indifference and careless attitudes of a student towards studying.
These poems display how little the commanders cared for the dead and tell of how fed up Wilfred Owen was about this, they tell of how horrific death was yet also show how common it was for the