ANALYSE QUOTE
“Bullets smacking the belly out of the air”
smacking:
- Sharp onomatopoeic sounds suggesting a child’s punishment
- Ironic as soliders are doing anything but child-like
- War has degraded mentality to a child’s?
smacking:
- The belly is where digestion takes place, showing how he is struggling to digest and accept the life of war and things he is having to witness and do
Personified bullets and semantic body parts with ‘belly’ and ‘smashed arm’ dehumanises the soldier and personifies the weapons, which blurs the line between weapon and man
ANALYSE QUOTE
“He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm”
“The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye”
- In past perfect tense, implying that he no longer weeps for love of his country
- His experience of war has destroyed his former patriotism
“Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest”
- “Iron” likens him more to a tank or machine, which further dehumanises him
- “Molten Iron would burn or destroy him, suggesting that he is already destroyed internally, “from the centre of his chest”. He is experiencing deep pain.
“In bewilderment then he almost stopped -“
- The soldier no longer understands war, his motivation and former patriotism have melted into ‘bewilderment’. Similar to soliders in WW1
- The use of the hyphen forms a caesura, signifying the idea that the solider is about to stop
“cold clockwork”
Alliteration emphasises the mechanical imagery and metaphor of his actions, which suggest that he has been acting more like a clockwork machine than a human, which implies that the solider has been dehumaising in his role
“yellow hare that rolled like a flame”
“yellow” is the colour of fear/cowardice
“hares” are usually prey
Metaphor suggests that he is a coward
Could also suggest that nature is terrified by the destruction of man
Could also suggest that innocent animals are also affected by war
“King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm”
“etcetera” suggests that he no longer believes this is what drives him
Completely abandoned his previously upheld values
