Task 2: Steps in Analysis—We slept with our Boots on
Point of View
· right before our eyes
· we loaded our ruck’s
· where we would land
· we had not a clue
· We’re leaving this bird
· My heart is pumping
· through all of my veins
· I run as fast as I can
· terror I can’t define
· I survived that day
· I kept pulling the trigger
· I will say no more
· We fought from the valleys
· We slept with our boots on so we were always prepared
· we drank it like drunkards
· I will never forget
· when I get to heaven
· I will tell
· I spent my time in hell
The usage of the pronouns “I”, “our”, “we”, and “my” indicate that the poet is speaking through the eyes of the persona in a first-person and thus non-omniscient and subjective point of view. The persona is likely to be reliable. Coincidentally, the abstract above gives us the summary for the poem!
Narrating the poem from this perspective allows the poet to show how the war affects the soldiers, from the soldiers own point-of-view. Furthermore, this point-of-view will cause the reader to be better able to understand the feelings and emotions that the poet is trying to convey, for first-person narration gives the reader the opportunity to relate to and sympathise with the persona.
Situation and Setting
The situation the persona is in is extremely bleak and terrifying, for he has to jump from his plane into enemy territory, and into a hail of gunfire. The persona, and indeed the poet, is a paratrooper who every day of his life has to risk everything for his country, jumping into enemy territory under a hail of gunfire.
This situation could be the reason the persona was and is beginning to doubt the war and his chances at survival "The reason why I survived the day was divine". He has also developed a close relationship with his platoon mates, as can be seen by "They say that blood is thicker than water, well lead is thicker than blood. In near death or critical situations, bonds forged can remain for one's entire lifetime, and are held by some as higher than even their own family.
The persona is also numbed to the situation by then - he "kept pulling the trigger and reloading and pulling some more", yet displays no sense of guilt for killing a fellow being.
Language/Diction
The command, "30 seconds they yelled, Lock N Load and grab your shit", among others, creates an overall faced paced effect, in the poem, building up both tension and excitement in the poem. It gives the overall impression that the poet and his comrades are running and fighting for their lives. They were so afraid and unsettled, that they don't even dare to take off their boots when sleeping. This, being put as the title, further emphasizes the terror of war that the persona is experiencing.
The writer uses the line "baptized in fire" to show the hopelessness and cruelty of war. As we all know, baptism is a tradition whereby all Christian have to be submerged in water before being saved. This is a symbolism of being washed of our sins and having hope for the future. However, in war, there is no water, so it symbolizes that the poets sins of killing accumulated in war can never be washed and forgiven. This brings out the cruelty and sinfulness of war. Also, instead of having hope, the writer is "baptized in fire". This shows how hopeless, cruel and torturing war is, to the point where it defies convention.
The repetition of the word "and" is also another feature of the poem: "I kept pulling the trigger and reloading and pulling some more ... Dirty and tired and hungry and scared". The constant use of "and", show how never-ending, dreary and tiring war is. The soldiers have to constantly do something in order to save their own lives.
Personal Response
I think that the war, as with all wars, is a huge waste of life. Indeed, the soldiers who were killed fighting for their country may have for all we know been in peacetime a scientist, and if not for a conflict of powers to defend a single party’s pride, might have done great things, perhaps to the tune of inventing a cure for cancer. This killing off of talent has happened before, although in a revolution, and not in war. During the French Revolution, a famous and extremely talented chemist was lynched by French peasants for he had been a tax collector. A quote from that time was, “It took a second to cut off his head, but a century might not suffice to produce a second.” Indeed, if not for the Revolution, this man might have lived to invent or discover greater things. Now that he is dead, we might never know.
War is also a waste of resources. Huge amounts of steel have to be used for the manufacture of weapons and a greater amount of lead for bullets. After a war, the belligerents are normally in debt of sums amounting billions of dollars, a great deal of which is pushed to the losing side to bear. This huge amount of resources could definitely have been put to much better purposes, instead of fighting against others of equal status to us.
War can also cause other wars – after the War To End All Wars (World War I), Adolf Hitler was so angry that he, after reaching power, began to eliminate those he considered of a weaker race, and then invaded Poland, sparking off World War II. If not for World War I, millions of people would not have died from both World Wars (and in fact the Spanish ‘flu after the war – it was spread because of the close contact between soldiers at the frontlines).
Amazingly, however one might campaign against war, there are still countless lines of people queuing up to enlist themselves in the army, especially during conflicts such as World War II. “War is a delight only to those who have never experienced it” sums this up. The military in order to attract more people to fight the war will advertise widely the glory of war and the importance of fighting for one’s country. It highlights especially to the more sceptical the glory of dying in war at the hands of the enemy for the good of one’s own nation (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori).
However, once one begins to experience war one becomes more and more sceptical about the intentions of war – many World War I poets after a while begin to doubt the real intentions of the war, and Siegfried Sassoon even wrote a letter attacking parliament’s purpose in continuing the war.
Even then, the survivors of the war are affected for the rest of their lives, be it because of shell shock or because their siblings were killed in action, scarring them permanently. Their platoon mates in the front become like brothers after such prolonged periods of exposure to one another, and the death of even one of them causes the rest to go into a state of dejection when any of them are killed. Indeed, if the whole platoon but one are wiped out, then the last person would feel extremely guilty, as if he should have died with them. This feeling is expressed very strongly in “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables”, sung by Marius Pontmercy in the musical Les Misérables (which is also about a revolution, this time the July Revolution). The poem expresses this feeling as well, “They say blood is thicker than water, well lead is thicker than blood.” Even after the end of the war, the deaths of fellow platoon mates will cause the soldiers to become dejected and haunted by nightmares.
Some soldiers are even physically scarred, by shells or grenades or gunfire, and when they return home after a tour of duty, they are greeted by a wife who leaves them for they are ‘too ugly’. Many of these soldiers end up committing suicide, even after surviving all the machinegun and sniper fire for a whole decade.
