Mametz Wood - Owen Sheers

Mametz Wood - Owen Sheers

1. Language

   • Imagery
     • 'a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm'
       • They all died together 'arm in arm'
       • Found buried in pieces
     • 'in boots that outlasted them'
       • The boots didn't decompose like them
       • Suggests the youth of the soldiers
     • 'the wasted young'
       • 'wasted' life
       • Decomposing
         • Wasting away
       • Youth of soldiers
     • 'and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open'
       • Jaws have been blown off
         • Dropped open in shock
       • Open because they were singing
         • 'As if the notes they had sung'

2. Title

   • Place where the bloody battle took place

3. Subject and Themes

   • About a fight that took place during the First World War
     • Took place 7th-12th July 1916
     • German Vs. Welsh
       • Welsh won but many died
     • Unfair fight
       • Bayonets against machine guns

4. Comparison

   • The Charge of the Light Brigade
     • Unfair fight

5. Poetic Techniques

   • Metaphor
     • 'the china plate of a shoulder blade'
       • 'China plate' is a familiar object, to illustrate what is usually hidden, 'shoulder blade'
       • Making the shoulder blades seem easy to brake
     • 'broken bird's egg of a skull'
       • Egg shells are fragile and easily broken
         • Suggests the vulnerability of the Welsh soldiers
       • 'its nesting machine guns' extends the bird/egg metaphor
         • Germans safe in nests
           • Waiting for Welsh
   • Simile
     • 'like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin'
       • Forcing the bodies/remains out because they don't belong in the earth
   • Personification
     • 'the earth stands sentinel'

6. Form and Structure

   • Seven stanzas
     • All are three-line stanzas