Comparison: Treatment Of War In "The Rank Stench Of Those Bodies Haunts Me Still" And "The Soldier"
"The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still" is written in alternating seven and six line stanzas. The lines are all pentameters, but there appears to be no rhyme system. Its structure seems less formal than that of "The Soldier". The opening line acts as a shock, bringing images of death and destruction. In only a few words, you seem to be transported to a battlefield. This opening line also serves as the poem's title. I was unable to discover whether the poem was originally untitled, and therefore known by its opening line, or whether this was a deliberate repetition. Nevertheless, the repetition seems to increase the impact of the poem's opening.
The line "And I remember things ...
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the hope that anyone he cares for could be spared this experience, and that they get back home wounded, but alive.
The lines "It's sundown in the camp; some youngster laughs, / Lifting his mug and drinking health to all / Who came unscathed from that unpitying waste:- / (Terror and ruin lurk behind his gaze.)" are deeply touching, a man tries to hide his fear behind a facade of bravado, but it is all too clear in his face. The words "unpitying waste", used to describe the indiscriminate slaughter they were part of also seems to imply that the author viewed the deaths as a waste and of no purpose.
In the last stanza, the poem points out that war causes everyone involved pain and loss, and that each side is made up of people who all have the same kinds of feelings:
"Then I remembered someone that I'd seen
Dead in the squalid, miserable ditch,
Heedless of the toiling feet that trod him down.
He was a Prussian with a decent face
Young, fresh and pleasant, so I dare to say.
No ...
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in vain, there is a core spirit of 'Englishness' that they have taken with them and left where they died, which will affect the inhabitants of that other country. In a sense, they may not have won the war, but they have advanced the cause of England. This is expressed in the words "That there's some corner of a foreign field / that is forever England…" The poet seems to feel that England is a kind of collective entity, made up of its people, rather than a place, and that the body of an English person constitutes a 'piece' of England, no matter where it is left. The words "…There shall be / in that rich earth a richer dust concealed;" suggest that among the dead of all nations involved in ...
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"Comparison: Treatment Of War In "The Rank Stench Of Those Bodies Haunts Me Still" And "The Soldier"." Essayworld.com. September 17, 2005. Accessed April 18, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comparison-Treatment-War-Rank-Stench-Those/33408.
"Comparison: Treatment Of War In "The Rank Stench Of Those Bodies Haunts Me Still" And "The Soldier"." Essayworld.com. September 17, 2005. Accessed April 18, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comparison-Treatment-War-Rank-Stench-Those/33408.
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