Top 3 Quotes for Conflict Poems

The Right Word ‘Are words no more / than waving, wavering flags?’ The rhetorical question allows us to understand the entirety of the poem. Dharker suggests that words are ‘flags’ in a metaphor. These flags then act as symbols to suggest something about the person the narrator sees. At the start this is very much antagonistic: ‘terrorist’ ‘hostile militant’ etc, but then, by the end of the poem, becomes a ‘child.’ The qualifier ‘wavering’ suggests that the labels the poet gives are fluid and can apply to the person in a variety of ways. ‘God help me. / Outside, defying every shadow, / stands a martyr.’ The first three words can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Poppies ‘Before you left, I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer.’ There is a clear significance with the narrator pinning the poppy (a symbol of remembrance) to her son’s blazer. As he leaves home this shows that she will remember him, and vice versa. The words ‘spasm’ and ‘disrupting’ suggest a violence to the possible deaths of the soldiers it refers to. The image is quite disturbing, giving dynamic verbs to the paper symbol. The poet uses alliteration to emphasise this point ‘bias binding around your blazer’ which could make the poppy seem like the soldier’s heart, or certainly allude to the fact that the issue of ‘remembrance’ is close to the narrator’s heart. ‘The dove pulled freely against the sky, / an ornamental stitch.’ The metaphor here compare the stitch with the bird’s flight. Symbolically the dove represents in Christian terms, the hope that Noah felt when the dove returned to the ark. This is comparable to the narrator and her hope for the return of her child. There is a juxtaposition in ‘pulled freely’ which suggests that possibly the freedom of her son will be a hard fought battle, connecting with the theme of conflict. Throughout the poem there is imagery connected with haberdashery: ‘darts, pleats’ etc. Here the stitch gives us an ambiguous ending, the flight of the bird, which doesn’t return, gives us no clear ideas as to the fate of the son. ‘Smoothed down your shirt’s upturned collar, steeling the softening of my face.’ The repetition of the ‘s’ sounds represents the actual ‘softening’ of sounds, mirroring the mother’s descent into sadness and tears. However, she is ‘steeling’ herself in the act of making her son’s uniform look good, to help prevent breaking down. Futility Form – The form of Futility is, roughly speaking, a sonnet. It doesn’t quite confirm to the rhyme scheme but it does have a number of half rhymes and 14 lines. It is almost as if Owen has chosen the form, the traditional poem of love, to talk about his love for his comrades. However, because of all the horror he has seen, Owen produces instead a wounded sonnet, like the boy he writes about. ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ This rhetorical question asks the reader to consider whether our evolution is to result in fighting. The ‘clay’ could be seen as relating to humanity as in the Bible, Adam is created from ‘clay,’ and our connotations with the word suggest something pliable and easy to manipulate, as perhaps Owen feels he has been manipulated into fighting. ‘O what made fatuous sunbeams toil / to break earth’s sleep at all?’ In the third rhetorical question, Owen sums up the message of the poem and asks us to consider the point of man and its evolution. The word ‘toil’ suggests hard work, the work it has taken to evolve as a society to this state. However, ‘fatuous’ means pointless, which links to the futility of the title, suggesting that Owen is not sure why the earth has evolved and broken its ‘sleep.’ Charge of the Light Brigade ‘When can their glory fade?’ The rhetorical question sums up why Tennyson has written the poem, to ensure that the Light Brigade are remembered forever. The emotive language ‘glory’ suggests how highly the poet holds the brave deeds of these soldiers. ‘Storm’d at with shot and shell, / Boldly they rode and well, / Into the jaws of Death / Into the mouth of Hell.’ The first thing that strikes us about these lines is the use of rhyme. Tennyson uses rhyme throughout to create a galloping rhythm which mirrors the galloping of horses hooves. There is also alliteration in the first of these lines which combines with the rhyme to create this rhythm. Death and Hell are both personified by the poet, giving them a physical presence in the poem which feels more immediate and unsettling for the soldiers – emphasising their bravery. ‘Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die.’ The repetition here unifies the 600 and tells us collectively the outcome. Even though ‘some one had blunder’d’ they still choose to follow their orders. The rhyme of ‘reply / why / die’ suggests the sequence and therefore foreshadows the ending of the poem. Bayonet Charge ‘He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm.’ This simile suggests that the soldier is carrying a dead weight, the word ‘numb’ reinforces this, as if the arm is useless. The word ‘smashed’ might suggest that the rifle is broken. As a soldier he feels as if the rifle is part of him, but in this moment of confusion, he is not using it effectively. ‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations / was he the hand pointing that second?’ The alliteration of ‘cold clockwork’ emphasises this image. In the metaphor the soldier is being compared to the second hand on a watch. The watch symbolises time and fate, and the soldier’s place in it. In this moment, the poet gets the soldier to consider his place in the grand scheme of the universe and where he fits: is it his time to die, is his time up? The rhetorical question asks us as a reader to also ponder the question. ‘human dignity, etcetcetra / dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm / to get out of that blue crackling air / his terror’s touchy dynamite.’ In this simile, the poet suggests that the best human qualities such as ‘dignity’ fall off of the soldier, as if he has to sacrifice these things to survive. It is his instinct for survival which makes him flee quickly. The alliteration in the last line reinforces this shock, describing it as ‘dynamite’ which alludes to explosive and instant power in the soldier’s flight.