Domestic Items (Symbol)
As the soldier makes his way through the dark underground tunnel, he finds objects left behind by other soldiers who previously lived there. These include tins, boxes, bottles, a smashed mirror, and a bed mattress. Even with the light of the soldier's torch, some of the items are shapes that are too vague to know. In their broken and abandoned states, these objects have a ghostly quality to them. The evidence of a domestic life in this dank and unwholesome environment is unsettling, providing another reminder in the poem about the downside of war. The list of objects includes things that readers are familiar with, thus prompting them to imagine being forced to lead a normal life in a place like the tunnel.
Light (Motif)
Light shows up repeatedly in the poem in different ways. The world above, with its twilight air and rosy gloom of a battle being waged, is characterized as idyllic in comparison to the darkness of the tunnel. However, the soldier's torch is described as "prying," which suggests that the light uncovers things best left undiscovered. This becomes apparent when the torch beams across a dead soldier's face. Thus light is both a symbol of longing and a force that reveals the grotesque in "The Rear-Guard."
Sleep (Motif)
When the soldier comes across a figure lying half-hidden by a rug, he assumes the person is sleeping. The soldier himself is revealed to extremely sleep-deprived, and this stressed condition causes him to react violently when the person lying at his feet does not answer his prompt for directions. However, it turns out that the sleeper is in fact dead, and had died an agonized death days before.
Sleep and death are closely related in the poem. In the subterranean world of the tunnel, the soldier's fear and lack of sleep evoke a deranged mood: he is among the "dazed, muttering creatures underground" (Line 21). Witnessing the evidence of a terrible death while experiencing a severe lack of sleep alters the soldier's mind.
