Cliff's Poem

Cliff's Poem : The Parting Shot

The single, most dominant impression of the poem is death. It is the miserable reality of death and war, we are introduce to.

The dramatic situation of the poem is a funeral, in which all attend to memorise the five who lost their lives. We are told how their friend, with a strong voice, speaks of them, and the deep, dark emotions that follow, as the tears roll down his cheeks. We see him speaking in line seven:

"and calls to his dead friends with his living breath"

The dark emotions are revealed in line ten to eleven:

"tears which fall from his face and bloom on his ironed green shirt like two dark wounds"

The tears here are representing his emotions and the dark wounds give us an exact impression of what these represent.

I believe the primary purpose of the poem is to provide insight. The speaker wants us to know what the soldiers went through. The speaker wants us to know of their loss and their pain. The speaker wants us to know and realise the reality of war. The pain and hurt of war, that we so often seem to forget. By that the speaker lets us in to their world of misery and loss, and shows us what grief they experienced.

The theme of this poem is war, and death. We can recognise this by the use of words within the poem, such as "dead" ( line 7), and "coffins"( line 2). As well as the word "ramrod"(line 5), and the "firing party"(line 3).

The speaker is speaking in third person, and is speaking to us, the audience. This is the poets method of bringing us an insight to their circumstances.

The kind of person speaking, is an observer, with an empathic personality. The mood of the speaker is emotional and sad, and is showing it to