Native Guard Essay Questions

Why does Trethewey divide the poem into journal entries?

Each of the sections in the poem concentrates on a particular month. These divisions enable the reader to appreciate the events that ensued during each of the months while showing the gradual toll that they take on the speaker over the course of the sequence. This structure gives Trethewey the ability to shift between subject matters, moving from a scene where the speaker helps Confederate prisoners write letters to a moment in which he witnesses a men being caught in friendly fire. This also allows her to portray the progression of time and with it the cumulative impact that all of these scenes have, an effect which might be lost if the speaker were recalling all of these events at once.

How does the speaker characterize his new life in the months shown in the poem?

The speaker of the poem is dismayed and worn down by the similarities between his old, pre-emancipation life and his new one. He notes that his Union military superiors do not treat him or the other Black soldiers with respect or compassion, delegating grunt work to them and calling them racial slurs. Finally, and most importantly, he notices with horror that the Union army does not value his life or the lives of the other Black soldiers, as they flippantly dismiss acknowledgment of their sacrifices. This comes to the fore in a moment in which a general leaves the bodies of a group of freedmen recruits unclaimed on a battlefield. The speaker comes to believe that racism is clearly not limited to Southern states and that the sacrifices made by men like him have gone almost entirely unrecognized.