War Photographer Literary Elements

The poem is told from a third-person, limited omniscient point of view. The speaker narrates the war photographer’s process of preparing the photographs for sale to a newspaper and conveys his internal thoughts and emotions.

four six-line stanzas, iambic meter.

Metaphors:

"In his dark room he is finally alone" (Line 1)
The “dark room," while literally referring to a darkroom used to develop photographs, is also a metaphor for the photographer’s state of mind after returning from the war and the dark subject matter of the poem.

"A stranger’s features faintly / start to twist before his eyes, / a half-formed ghost." (Lines 13-15)
The stranger is metaphorically described as a "half-formed ghost," which simultaneously refers to the blurriness of the photograph, the fact that the stranger depicted has presumably died, and the memories that haunt the photographer like a ghost.

Similes:
"The only light is red and softly glows, / as though this were a church and he / a priest" (Lines 3-5)
Duffy uses a simile to compare the red light used in the darkroom to the soft light of a church with red stained-glass windows before Mass.

"spools of suffering set" (Line 2)
"Belfast. Beirut." (Line 6)
"solutions slop" (Line 7)
“without words to do what…” (Line 17)
“…between the bath and pre-lunch beers” (Line 22)

Amid the danger and horrors of war, the photographer has composure while taking photographs. However, he feels terror and trembles while he is in the safety and comfort of his studio away from the war.

Modern Poetry, War Literature

The poem is set in a darkroom studio in rural England as the photographer’s memories take the reader to the warzone he just left.

Somber; Introspective; Pensive

The protagonist in the poem is the war photographer. The antagonist is the horrors of war that cause human suffering.

The conflict arises from whether the photographer will manage to evoke the right reactions and emotions in the viewers of his photographs. Because he has experienced war, he understands the true depth of its horror, and has deep empathy with its victims because he has seen their pain firsthand. However, the audience that will view the photographs in the newspapers will perhaps be apathetic or have only fleeting sympathy for the victims.

The climax of the poem occurs in the third stanza, when the photograph develops to reveal a "stranger" whose "blood stained the foreign dust." The photograph specifically and viscerally reveals the horrors that the photographer has witnessed, and represents the crucial, climactic step in the development process when the image is revealed.

The mention of the "dark room" foreshadows the despair and isolation that the photographer experiences throughout the session and when he returns to the war zone.

The Bible verse "All flesh is grass" in Line 6, which references the brevity of human life, foreshadows the stranger's death described in the third stanza.

The speaker downplays the complexities and trauma of a war photographer's role in Line 7: "He has a job to do."

The speaker also downplays the brief emotional reactions of the readers in Lines 21-22: “The reader’s eyeballs prick / with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers."

The poem alludes to and draws from the images captured during the Vietnam War depicting the magnitude of human suffering. More specifically it refers to the airstrikes that devastated the villages of innocent civilians, for instance in Nick Ut’s famous "Napalm Girl" photograph.

The photographs throughout the poem serve as a metonymy for the suffering of war more broadly.

"A stranger’s features / faintly start to twist before his eyes" (Lines 14-15)
The speaker personifies the photograph by referring directly to the man depicted.

"A hundred agonies in black and white" (Line 19): The reference to "a hundred agonies" may be a hyperbole, as, realistically, the photographer is not likely to have developed a hundred pictures in a single session in the darkroom.

"slop" (Line 7)
"tremble" (Line 8)