The Colonel Poem

Poetry Analysis Essay

The purpose of visual imagery in poetry is to help get the poet’s message across in a language that is strong, vivid and very visual. Visual imagery evokes the emotions of the reader by appealing to their senses and through this helps enhance the mood of the poem. The mood implied in “Daddy”, by Sylvia Plath, is that of aggressive, anger, irritable from one that has a childlike devotion to one of severing due to abandonment. In “The Colonel”, by Carolyn Forche, is one of controlled terror, intimidation, torture, and literal dismemberment. In “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”, by Randall Jarrell, the story sets the mood of melancholy at the hands of the state. Each poem a dictatorial figure whether it be the father,

Forche says, “His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night.” She allows the reader to get comfortable and relate to the Colonel’s family. To begin this way makes what follows a dramatic and drastic change that creates a horrible, distressing, and frightful experience. On the 4th line she says, “Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace.” Forche is comparing cut lace to the cutting of hands with provides imagery of sharp fine

He was brought out of this conscious state by the black flak and the nightmare fighters with these lines it brings contrasting images of dreaming of life and the reality of the approaching death. The final image brought up in this piece which also creates the most disturbing visual imagery is in the 5th line when he says, “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” At this point it is like a morbid rebirth. In harsh contrast to a mother giving life to a child, the turret/womb of the bomber births the gunner to death. The soldiers sacrifice was not viewed as that, but just as a number for body count. It’s through the metaphorical imagery the readers are able to visualize the delicacy of life and the reality of death. Understanding the effects of war and the appalling experiences our soldiers have to endure while fighting for their country facilitates communicating effectively about literature and its function in the context of American and world history and culture