Poetry: Vergissmeinnicht Flashcards
Vergissmeinicht
Author’s opinion on plunder expressed in the poem
Line 9
“Look. Here in the gunpit spoil”
- Douglas condemns the plundering nature of war
- The imperative ‘look’ shows triumphant tone and excitemnet as they find something dear to the soldier
- Imagery of ‘gunpoint spoil’ and plunder by the victor reveals the densensitising nature of war-narrator’s triumph at items which are only important for the dead soldier
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of what happened to the soldier’s body
Line 20
‘The dust upon the paper eye/and the burst stomach like a cave’
- visual imagery of burst stomach like cave, the adjective burst is EXPLOSIVE and onomateopoeic, conveys the violence of war
- Simile, like a cave shows gruesome detail, illustrating horrible reality of war and the vulnerability/cheapness of the human body + emptiness
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of the dead soldier’s equipment
Line 15
‘paid and mocked by his own equipment/that’s hard and good when he’s decayed’
- Personfication of equipment - ‘mocked’ denotes human hierachy so placing equipment above soldier
- Equipment is more alive than he is
- Imagery of his equipment that is ‘hard’ and ‘good’ is a tasteless sign of sexual euphemisim that shows the narrators heartless gloating especially in relation to his girl
- Used as a symbol of life and vitality
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of a dead soldier on the battlefield
Line 4
‘Found the soldier sprawling in the sun’
- definite article ‘the’ confirms the narrators intention in his search for a specific soldier
- ‘sprawling’ has connotations of happiness, satisfaction and relaxation rendered unsettling by the sibilance voices the narrators hatred
- sprwaling means relaxation, eternal relaxation, uncanny
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of gun shadow frown
Line 5-6
‘The frowning barrel of his gun/overshadowing’
- violence of guns which exist to kill
- personificiation of weapon as ‘frowning’ connotating displeasure at the sight of the soldier’s death rendering the gun powerless
- The continous verb of ‘overshadowing’ conveys enduring feeling of menace
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of past events of the battle
Line 8
‘Like the entry of a demon’
- By comparing the bullet to a ‘demon’ presents overwhelming nature of war aswell as how strong and horrifying and hell like war is in reality
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of what the narrator is feeling when he sees the soldier he killed
Line 13
‘We see him almost with content, abased’
- Tense change, the present here further emphasises the soldier’s death and the narrators life
- ‘abased’ shows he is jubilant at his victory and wants satisfaction from his death ‘content’
- Adverb, ‘almost’ shows narrator on the verge of moral corruption
- feeling densitised over nature of war
Vergissmeinnicht
Description of the battlefield in VGMN
Line 2&3
‘returning over the nightmare ground/we found the place again’
- Metpahor of ‘nightmare ground’ shows the hellish nature of the battlefield LNK demon bullet
- ‘We’ is a plural pronoun indicating that others have the same opinion as him, amplifying the hellish feeling
vergissmeinnicht
lover and fighter
22-24
‘who had one body and one heart/and death who had the soldier singled/has done the lover mortal hurt’
- LNK to Steffi show the contrasting effects of war
- two sides to war
vergissmeinnicht
steffi
11-12
‘Steffi.Vergissmeinnicht./in a copybook gothic script’
- copybook gothic is neat schoolbook writing showing the innocence of the soldier and contrasts of war
