![]() ![]() Also, short gasping sounds like the assonant ‘uh’ in guttering' and ‘slush. Therefore, there are onomatopoeic words like ‘thud’, ‘flump’ and ‘thumping’. Owen’s aim is clearly to convey a sense of immediacy, and uses devices to replicate the sounds the soldiers will hear. The detailed annotations will provide more information. The exception is the ellipsis at the end of stanza one. Also, Owen uncharacteristically uses a regular metrical rhythm of iambic pentameters, a iamb or metrical foot comprising one unstressed and one stressed syllables. Unusally for Owen there is a complex rhyme scheme, for example, the pattern in the first stanza is ABACDCDCEE. The poem comprises three stanzas of unequal length - the first and last ten lines each and the middle stanza sixteen lines. Owen recounts how the man’s damaged eyes haunt him still in dreams. The young man, in his fear and distress, claims to be able to see his comrades' lights, but they’ve been extinguished. He falls down the steps into the dug-out and is The sentry is still alive but blinded. The heavy rain makes conditions even more hellish, with men standing waist-high in slush, There is no escape and the smell is appalling.Ī direct hit by a whizz-bang (soldiers' slang for a small shelll) which blows the sentry off his feet. The poem describes how Owen and his men have found an old ‘Boche’ dug-out, but have been observed by the Germans so are under constant bombardment. He completed it not long before his death in France in September 1918, when the War was nearing its end. Owen wrote most of ‘The Sentry while receiving hospital treatment for shell-shock at Craiglockhart in 1917. Let dread hark back for one word only: how Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps, And the wild chattering of his broken teeth, Renewed most horribly whenever crumps Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath- Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout "I see your lights!" But ours had long died out. Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed, And one who would have drowned himself for good,- I try not to remember these things now. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids Watch my dreams still but I forgot him there In posting next for duty, and sending a scout To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about To other posts under the shrieking air. We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined " O sir, my eyes-I'm blind-I'm blind, I'm blind!" Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids And said if he could see the least blurred light He was not blind in time he'd get all right. And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck- The sentry's body then his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles. There we herded from the blast Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.
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