Task 2

I have chosen the Poem “We Slept with Our Boots On” by Steve Carlson. Firstly, I will elaborate on the 8 points of a poem before I start on the conflict of the poem. One of the 8 Points of a Poem is the Point Of View, which means who is the speaker of the poem? From this poem, I can conclude that the speaker is actually a soldier involved in the war, battling for his country. The evidence is “They unloaded the dead and maimed right before our eyes”. This shows that the speaker saw his enemy unload the casualties from their vehicle and injured them right before the author and his allies’ eyes. The speaker is likely to be a soldier as if the speaker was not in a battlefield fighting; he would not be able to see the images of his enemies injuring his comrades in front of his own eyes. Another evidence is “I kept pulling the trigger and reloading and pulling some more.” This depicts the speaker who is firing his weapon and is reloading the bullets, triggering the bullets in a repeated manner. The speaker is also adds to my conclusion as he would not be able to use a weapon and firing his bullets non-stop if he was not a soldier. The speaker who I can infer is a soldier realised that he can leave the battlefield anytime due to the threats around him and can die anytime. However, the speaker reacts very calmly and does not show any sense of being intimidated. In the poem, he does not show that he is trying to cover the facts but he shows the readers the truth of war with no sense of prejudice at all. He shows that the soldiers are actually fighting for no apparent reason at all and there is no sense of patriotism, emotions in him which is like a zombie fighting with no feelings at all. Secondly, the 2nd Point is situation and settings which means where the location was likely to be in the poem and how it looked like with its features. In this Poem, I can infer that the situation was depicting warfare on a battlefield. The evidence showed is “I run as fast as I could through the lead rain” which showed that the speaker was dashing through a battlefield with bullets falling on the soldiers like rain. It was likely to be on a battlefield as it was covered with bullets falling down like rain whereas in other location it would be unlikely to have a situation like this. The conflicts in the poem consists battles in many aspect. Examples are psychological, emotional and ethnic. The soldiers’ comrades were murdered in front of their own eyes which show that they have to battle their own courage in their hearts which shows the psychological battles in their heart. The emotional conflicts were when the speaker depicts the terror in the battle which shows that the soldiers were afraid of death but still were forced to continue battle for no apparent reason. The ethnic conflict was the fact of war which is inhumane and the soldiers trying to exterminate each other which unethical. Thirdly, is the form and language of the poem and how it is linked with the speaker’s feelings. The form of this poem is in a form where the first line rhymes with the second line, third line is rhyming with the fourth line and further on. This is in a style like monotononous praying in which is like the soldiers are praying for their lives to stay alive with no sense of emotions anymore by the brutality of war. The poem is simple and straight with no sense of covering the facts of war and is truthful. The poet uses imagery words to describe the emotionless killings of soldiers and to depict the scene of the war to give the readers on how the battle scene was like. An example is “washed out the blood” which shows that blood was always flowing out due to the murder of soldiers to give the readers see the brutality of war and the scene of how the battle took place. Personification is also used in the poem. An example is” Bullets are flying” in which it shows that bullets were fired everywhere and were like in a sense, flying. Bullets are not supposed to fly but the poets used it to describe the bullets as in they contained a life, killing many soldiers. Simile is also used in the poem. “I run as fast as I could through the lead rain” showed the simile of the speaker running through the bullets which fell on him and he was running as fast as he could to dodge the bullets. This showed that the speaker was cautious of protecting his own lives and was in a desperate situation to stay safe from the bullets. The language in the poem shows that the speaker is not concealing the truth but in turn, it conveying the message that war is meaningless with no sense of fighting for a reason. Lastly, my personal response is that I can understand the message the author is conveying as he tells us the meaningless battling of soldiers. The emotionless soldiers are fighting and battling without any sense of patriotism which showed that they were not fighting for their country, but instead just fighting for the sake of fighting. The tone in the poem is straightforward which further emphasises that war is just straightforward, is whether you stay alive or you get brutally murdered and injured or even handicapped. The imagery words also showed me the scene of the war and how it looked like, with blood spluttering everywhere and bullets being fired, gave me a sense of how war looked like. Thus, from this poem, I can conclude that war is actually a sense of pride, not a sense of conquering each other .