Chris Carragher
Dr. Cella
English 107 Lit
11 September 2015
Poetry Analysis Rough Draft When one thinks of a war poem, images of cannons, guns, smoke and death are conjured in the reader’s mind. Though Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles is a war poem, none of the classic elements of such a war poem are present at surface value. Colette Inez, the author of Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles writes a poem that could be attributed to multiple themes. One could argue that it is a yearning of nostalgia for a time when life was better and lighter. It could also be viewed as a poem about death and morality, but at its heart, Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles is a war poem; It is an unconventional war poem which focuses not on the soldiers …show more content…
Certain phrases she uses provoke gory images of war in the reader’s mind even though they are written as mundane: “and writhing on the floor, war news shut off” (377). In this scene, Inez is describing people laughing on the floor, reading a joke book. But as a war poem, one can easily attribute the bodies of the characters to actual bodies writing in pain as they might on a battlefield. Likewise, the speaker describes hearing the constant moans from the back room of Doris’ mother, which could also evoke in the reader’s head the moans of wounded soldiers in battle. While discussing how they and Doris would laugh at old lady’s hats, the speaker talks about the ‘headgear’ worn by Doris’ mother. The word headgear may have a denotation for hats, but in a war poem it implies connotations for headwear such as helmets, the kind worn by soldiers. The fact that the characters don’t recognize the correlations that are brought up through this imagery is extremely ironic, since they are living in a country at war. Doris and the speaker once again blatantly lose themselves in a world of joke-books and horsing around while the death and suffering is all around them, both in the form of the dying mother and in larger part the country at
Dr. Cella
English 107 Lit
11 September 2015
Poetry Analysis Rough Draft When one thinks of a war poem, images of cannons, guns, smoke and death are conjured in the reader’s mind. Though Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles is a war poem, none of the classic elements of such a war poem are present at surface value. Colette Inez, the author of Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles writes a poem that could be attributed to multiple themes. One could argue that it is a yearning of nostalgia for a time when life was better and lighter. It could also be viewed as a poem about death and morality, but at its heart, Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles is a war poem; It is an unconventional war poem which focuses not on the soldiers …show more content…
Certain phrases she uses provoke gory images of war in the reader’s mind even though they are written as mundane: “and writhing on the floor, war news shut off” (377). In this scene, Inez is describing people laughing on the floor, reading a joke book. But as a war poem, one can easily attribute the bodies of the characters to actual bodies writing in pain as they might on a battlefield. Likewise, the speaker describes hearing the constant moans from the back room of Doris’ mother, which could also evoke in the reader’s head the moans of wounded soldiers in battle. While discussing how they and Doris would laugh at old lady’s hats, the speaker talks about the ‘headgear’ worn by Doris’ mother. The word headgear may have a denotation for hats, but in a war poem it implies connotations for headwear such as helmets, the kind worn by soldiers. The fact that the characters don’t recognize the correlations that are brought up through this imagery is extremely ironic, since they are living in a country at war. Doris and the speaker once again blatantly lose themselves in a world of joke-books and horsing around while the death and suffering is all around them, both in the form of the dying mother and in larger part the country at