War Photographer

Comment on structure, rhyme scheme

quatrain with six lines in it. ABBC DD rhyme scheme. the tightly controlled structure
which contrasts the war which is not controlled. the poet uses the anapestic meter,
iambic meter, and spondee in the poem.

moral dilemma
PTSD

Stanza 1 -Techniques

Connotations of dark in the darkroom - ominous

‘finally’ in finally alone - adverb - relief

Spools of suffering set out in ordered rows - metaphor and sibilance - sinister,
‘ordered’ - regularity of the sibilance, ordered dead bodies

‘red’ - dangerous, blood, in catholic churches

‘softly’ - ironic

Extended Simile of comparing the photographer to the priest - they both deal with
death, sacred duty, intermediate between the world and warlike god and people

The holophrastic phrases with caesuras - warzones, pauses th pace

‘All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field’ - Biblical allusion -
Isiah - Chapter 40 Verse 6 - life is fragile, don't have the value of grass in these
warzones.

Stanza 2

What kind of line is ‘He has a job to do.’ - a matter of fact, full stop - doesn't want to
think too much

Solutions slop - Why ‘slop’? - messy, sibilance

Solutions - he thinks there might be a solution to the war

Rural England - in between two full stops - adjective ‘Rural’ - the contrast between
warzones and England

‘nightmare heat’ - mines and bombs

Contrasted to the horror in war-torn places - idyllic life in England

juxtaposition - life in england and warzone

Stanza 3

Dramatic opening - suspense

Use of ‘twist’ - pain, horrific emotions

Half-formed ghost - a metaphor - ambiguous, he took a picture of a dying man or the

man partly lives in his photos

‘Sought approval’ - comment on the word choices - cares and respects the boundaries
unlike other journalists

‘without words’ - awkward, he's not in his own country

‘to do what someone must’ - moral dilemma

‘Bloodstained into foreign dust’ - he can't help anyone and all he can do is take their
pictures, stained - leaves a mark in your memory forever

Enjambment - What is the effect - connects all the lines together as she wants us to
visualize the horrors of war.

caesura - she wants us to pause and think about the war life.

Stanza 4

Contrast ‘a hundred agonies’ or ‘five or six’ - his own agonies and the war life people
are like a hundred while only five or six pictures not even on the front page are
selected

Sunday’s Supplement - alliteration, for entertainment

Choice of ‘prick’ - pain that doesn't last

The half-rhyme between ‘tears’ and ‘beers’ - quickens the pain felt by the ‘prick’

Black and white - contrasts England and warzones

Why dies he stare ‘impassively’ - because he feels numb after facing the horrors he
has seen.

definite statement - ‘they do not care’

cyclic structure - the memories of war are playing repeats endlessly in his mind,
nobody cares while he is stuck in this cycle, the war will go on and on.