Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
Narrator is unidentified, speaking in the third-person point of view with an omniscient perspective.
Form and Meter
An example of free composed without strict meter or form contributes to the feeling of chaos and disorder engendered by the content.
Metaphors and Similes
“King, honour, human dignity, etcetera / Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm” is metaphorical imagery pinpointing the exact moment at which every motivation for going to war is subjugated to the fear which drives his quest for survival.
Alliteration and Assonance
Prominent use of alliteration comes to a climax in the final imagery of the final line: “His terror’s touchy dynamite.”
Irony
“He was running / Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs / Listening between his footfalls for the reason / Of his still running” is a metaphorical image that speaks to the irrationality of fighting in a war without really knowing what you’re fighting for. The irony manifests itself in the alliterative connection of “running” to “reason” to “running” while the rest of the line highlights the point that there is no reason at work here.
Genre
Anti-war poetry.
Setting
Unidentified, but generally assumed to be a battle taking place during World War I.
Tone
Surrealistic desperation.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: The soldier running for his life. Antagonist: The insanity of war.
Major Conflict
The major conflict at work in the poem is the soldier’s desperation borne of fear urging him to survive versus the myriad patriotic motivations for being there in the first place.
Climax
The climax is the moment at which all those justifications for fighting—king, country, and the dignity of human beings—are rejected in favor of doing whatever it takes to survive.
Foreshadowing
The sudden awakening of the soldier which commences the poem foreshadows the equally sudden epiphany which marks the climactic moment of a clear and precise understanding of the futility of war and the phony propaganda of patriotism.
Understatement
The “etcetera” is an especially effective form of understatement in that it encompasses the whole range of patriotic fervor which is used to whip up support for war while at the time powerfully dismissing every one of them as equally true examples of snake oil.
Allusions
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
“Bullets smacking the belly out of the air” attributes human reason to the bullets which fly through air.
Hyperbole
The opening line is hyperbolic if taken literally, although such a reading is very unlikely to have been intended: “Suddenly he awoke and was running- raw”
Onomatopoeia
The sound of the bullets “smacking the belly out of air” is also an example of this technique.
