Interpreting Art and Poetry: Insights on War and Humanity

The Show

Starter http://aarkangel.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/t03846_9.jpg Using Art to Comment on War What do you think this picture is aiming to convey about war?

Starter http://aarkangel.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/t03846_9.jpg It shows a group of sixteen stiff men and women, military and civilians, all trapped on a never-ending carousel ride. Gertler creates a claustrophobic atmosphere by filling most of the canvas with the image of the out-of- control roundabout. The carousel looks precarious, as if at any moment it might crush or suffocate its riders. The doll-like figures all have unsettling, open-mouthed expressions. You can almost imagine the sound of their cries as the spin in eternal anguish.

Learning Intentions Technique To explore the impact of diction choices in The Show. Poem How does Owen use description to convey the horror of war? Oral To practise talking in detail about Owen s diction and imagery and its impact.

Diction Look at the words in front of you: sweats weak dearth scabs plagues caterpillars horror shrivelled slimy trailed holes smell dithering cratered woe harsh gloom reeled hollow uncoiled dregs shivered pocks writhed creatures worm migrants mire What sort of connotations are conveyed by individual words? Can you see any patterns?

Diction Look at the words in front of you: sweats weak dearth scabs plagues caterpillars horror shrivelled slimy trailed holes smell dithering cratered woe harsh gloom reeled hollow uncoiled dregs shivered pocks writhed creatures worm migrants mire What sort of connotations are conveyed by individual words? Can you see any patterns?

First Impressions 1. What is the story? 2. What sort of impression does this make upon you on first reading? 3. What is Owen hoping to convey to the reader? 4. Identify 3 things that Owen is conveying in this poem.

The Show What are the connotations of the title? The poem was drafted at Scarborough in November 1917 and finished the following May. Edith and Osbert Sitwell, who were influential in the arts world, included it in their 1919 edition of WHEELS .

Owen Likened the scene at Serre to "the eternal place of gnashing of teeth ..The Slough of Despond could be contained in one of its crater-holes, the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah could not light a candle to it . It is pock-marked like a body of foulest disease .crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness."

Influences The poem was influenced by UNDER FIRE by Henri Barbusse, which Owen read at Craiglockhart. This is a graphic account of a Europe at war with the dead looking down on terrible scenes of crawling things dwarfed to the size of insects and worms.

Looking at 3 Aspects of the Poem Decide on 3 areas for exploration. 1. The use of the depiction of a barren landscape to create mood. 2. The impact of Owen s metaphorical transformation of that landscape through sickness imagery 3. The impact of the depiction of the men as creatures. All help to create impressions of the speaker s sense of alienation.

The Nature of the Language Areas to Explore 1. A Hellish Landscape An environmental nightmare 3 repellent images 2. Bodily Sickness The landscape reworked as a metaphor 3. Men as Creatures The human beings dehumanised. Speaker Above with Death and one of the creatures. The shell-blasted landscape, c1916

The Show My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, Grey, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues. 5 Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled. It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed. By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped Round myriad warts that might be little hills. 10 From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept, And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes. (And smell came up from those foul openings As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.) 15

On dithering feet upgathered, more and more, Brown strings towards strings of grey, with bristling spines, All migrants from green fields, intent on mire. Those that were grey, of more abundant spawns, Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten. 20 I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten, I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten. Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean, I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather. And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan. And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further, Showed me its feet, the feet of many men, And the fresh-severed head of it, my head. 25

There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams. There's a long, long night of waiting Until my dreams all come true; Till the day when I'll be going down That long, long trail with you.

Talking About the Poem Take one of the areas and explain to your partner how you feel Owen uses it to convey messages.