Analyzing Poetry - Ballad of Birmingham

Cameron Sanders

Prof. James Price

English Comp 1301

3-24-2015

Analyzing poetry through the lenses of imagery and word order

Even though the settings of “Dulce et decorum Est” and “Ballad of Birmingham” take place in two different parts of the world and two different time periods, they still show how death affects people and aren’t a pretty sight for anyone to see. Wilfred Owens Dulce ET Decorum Est takes place on the battlefield during the perilous World War 1 as he explains the unimaginable horrors seen there while Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” takes place in the racially divided and violent South, where unspeakable acts of violence occurred every day towards African Americans. Both Wilfred Owens and Dudley Randall bring their poems “Dulce et decorum Est” and “Ballad of Birmingham” to life by using tactful diction, imagery, and irony to describe the true horrors and tragedies that shaped American history.

  In the first stanza of “Dulce et decorum Est” Owen describes his fellow soldiers as being, “bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags”( Owens 826) to show how these young once vibrant soldiers have been turned into sickly, broken down men as if they had really transitioned into old men due to the tribulations of war. It’s funny to me though that while describing his men as being on their last leg and barely moving, Owen seems to be unaffected and in a state of awe by what war has done to his fellow soldiers.  Owens word choice helps us visualize the men hunched over like old men, slowly moving about with no reason to go on. Similarly in the “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall the young girl in the poem is also given characteristics of an older person while she speaks with her mother: “Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of out to play, and march the streets of Birmingham in a Freedom March today?” (Randall 775).  Usually young children aren’t interested in society’s problems and are mostly oblivious to the world around them other than the ones their parents create. So it’s funny that a child would rather march for her people’s freedom than enjoy being a “kid” and playing and being carefree. Randall’s skillful use of the words “play” and “march” are vital to the story because the word “march” is usually associated with power and seriousness while the word “play” is more juvenile and friendly. This adds to the irony of the poem because you wouldn’t expect a child to be interested in “adult” matters, but it helps emphasize how major the civil rights movement was. So important that even innocent children would give up free time to potentially face “clubs and hoses, guns and jails” (Ballad of Birmingham, page 775, line 7).  

“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time”. In this verse from stanza two, Owens pairing of imagery and diction helps paint the scene of what a gas raid looked and felt like and the consequences of not escaping its deadly wrath in time. He describes the plight to avoid death by one of his soldiers as “someone… yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...” (Owen 826 line 12) to avoid the smoke described as “a green sea”. The use of the word “sea” helps the reader to envision a whole battlefield flooded with lethal gas used to try to kill the soldiers and to emphasize the power a gas mask had over the life or death of a soldier. By using present tense verbs such as “guttering, writhing,” and “choking”, Owen creates an atmosphere of being present in the event as if it were happening in real time. You can almost hear the sounds as he describes the soldier “drowning...from his froth corrupted lungs” (Owens 826, lines 16 and 17).

Randall’s pairing of diction and imagery can be compared to Owen’s when Randall describes the explosion of the church in “Ballad of Birmingham”.  Randall goes in to detail about the feelings of the mother as the bomb goes off. Randall writes, “For when she heard the explosion, her eyes grew wet and wild”. The use of the word “wild” when describing the mother’s tears, helps the reader understand that the mother was crying from fear and not sadness. Randall then depicts the mother “rac[ing] through the streets of Birmingham

    Calling for her child “. The use of the word “racing” paints an image of a worried mother, panting, stressed, and anxious to find her daughter whom she just let out into the dangers of the world. Both Randall an Owens paint vivid pictures in our head with their pairings of imagery and diction to further emphasize the emotions of the characters in their poems. Randall does this by using words to fit the mood and tone of the scene, while Owens uses present tense verbs to make the reader feel like he is a part of the scene.