War Photographer

Poet

CAROL ANN DUFFY

Context

• War photographers fulfil a very dangerous job; they put their lives in danger to capture images of the severity of war.
• Many have been killed and injured but they see it as a necessary sacrifice in order to present information to an audience ‘at home’.
• The problem is that a picture does not always tell the full story and is becoming less and less powerful in desensitised Western Society.

Plot

• The poem follows the journey of a man who returns from a war-torn land to develop his photographs.
• The pictures remind him of his experiences and the atrocities which are happening abroad.
• The violence in the war zones is contrasted with the nonchalant attitude of the Western world.
• The photographer is dismayed, as he leaves to go to work again.

Form

• Narrative
• Third person perspective
• Flashback
• Enjambment
• Both rhyming couplets and non-rhyming lines
• Simple sentences

Structure

• Four stanzas

Language

• Metaphor
• Sibilance
• Antithesis
• Figures
• Animal imagery
• Symbolism

Tone

• Detached
• Cynical
• Fear
• Frustration
• Disgust

Themes

• Power of humans
• Power of memory
• War
• Death
• P.T.S.D.
• Education