Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem's speaker is a seasoned army officer teaching army recruits about the parts of a rifle.
Form and Meter
The poem is made up of five stanzas with six lines each, known is sextets. It has no consistent meter.
Metaphors and Similes
The speakers uses simile to describe nature in phrases like "Japonica / Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens."
Alliteration and Assonance
The line 'This is the lower sling swivel...' uses alliterative "S" sounds, which repeat throughout the stanza. The phrase '...whose use you will see' uses assonant "u" sounds.
Irony
Ironically, the speaker continues to try to educate his listeners about gun parts that they do not even have on their own rifles. More broadly, the poem reveals the irony that, while the speaker and the military aim for a streamlined and orderly approach, they are actually so rigid as to become nonsensical, whereas nature follows a more orderly and sensible pattern.
Genre
Anti-war
Setting
Japan during World War II
Tone
Harsh and commanding, interwoven with appreciative and dreamlike
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonists are the army recruits, while the antagonist is the military itself, represented by the speaker
Major Conflict
The poem's major conflict is between man-made violence and the natural world: the speaker and soldiers must choose whom to align themselves with.
Climax
The poem's climax comes in its fourth stanza, when the speaker compares the movement of bees to the movement of a gun's breech.
Foreshadowing
The poem's first line, which states that the day's agenda will be the "naming of parts," foreshadows the poem's remaining content.
Understatement
By reducing the use of a gun to a series of bloodless mechanics, the entire poem uses understatement, constantly suggesting but eliding violence and bloodshed.
Allusions
The poem alludes to World War II, and especially to the weaponry used in that war.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The gun is evoked only through synecdoche, as each of its parts are named one at a time.
Personification
The speaker personifies flower blossoms in the lines, "... The blossoms / Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see / Any of them using their finger.'
He also personifies branches in the lines "The branches / Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures"
Hyperbole
N/A
Onomatopoeia
The word 'flick' is onomatopoetic.
