How does Joyce use words and images to create striking effects in IHAA?

In this poem, Joyce portrays the terrifying onslaught of overwhelming negative thoughts and
feelings, using the image of an attacking army to convey the speaker's hopeless dejection in
the face of these difficult emotions.

One of the poem's most striking elements is the way Joyce uses sound imagery to make the
army seem fearsome. Our attention is immediately drawn to the cacophony created by the
army, as the speaker initially says he can "hear" - rather than see - the oncoming attackers.
Indeed, the description of the "thunder of horses" in the second line makes the army sound
like a huge oncoming storm rolling over the horizon, conveying the thumping, terrifying
noise of hoof beats, and implying that the army is an unstoppable force of nature. In the
second stanza, too, Joyce employs techniques designed to mimic the striking sounds heard by
the speaker - the repetition in "clanging, clanging", combined with the word's onomatopoeic
quality, perhaps evokes the sound of metal weaponry, further developing the idea of the army
as fearsome and powerful. By the final stanza, however, we are dealing with the effects on
the speaker of this overwhelming onslaught. He plaintively appeals to a lost loved one,
repeating "my love, my love, my love" as he questions why he has been left alone. The
assonance here, combined with the repetition, creates a pleading, helpless tone which is at
odds with the brutality of the army and creates a striking contrast between attacker and
victim.

Joyce creates a striking sense of the speaker's despair as he is overwhelmed by violent

emotions and is ultimately left feeling utterly defeated. Upon hearing the army's battle-cry,
the speaker says he "moan[s] in sleep". The word "moan" suggests a sense of pain, perhaps
here connected to the loss of a loved person. The word's assonance makes it sound like a
moan, emphasising the speaker's feelings of pain as he lies awake and faces the onslaught of
the army. This sense of being overwhelmed by painful emotions is developed as the feelings
are described as "clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil". The onomatopoeic
quality of "clanging", combined with its repetition, suggests that these feelings are battering
the speaker's heart repeatedly and painfully, which strikingly conveys how overwhelmed he
feels. Joyce's simile evokes a blacksmith's forge, somewhere hot, violent, loud,
overwhelming and confusing. The image strikingly represents the speaker's emotional state as
being full of painful and overwhelming confusion. Joyce's choice of simile might also imply
that the speaker's heart is in some way being reshaped by the experience he's undergoing;
does it perhaps imply that he is being destroyed, or at least changed by these emotions?

PREP: write a paragraph of your own, using my sentence / evidence below if you would like:

Joyce also creates the striking impression that the army is somehow strange or unnatural,
which seems to add to the speaker’s feelings of despair and confusion.

Evidence:

- “black armour”
- “cleave the gloom of dreams” / “blinding flame” (how could the contrast between
‘gloom’ and ‘blinding’ add to the sense of confusion?)
- “long, green hair”
- “They come out of the sea”