This is how I would go about approaching to write a commentary about this poem (or prepare for an oral commentary):
Step 1 : Read the poem carefully at least twice
Step 2: Identify the whole and the part
What is the nature of the whole? It’s a poem about war, about marching and singing in the face of death.
What kind of work is it? It’s poetry
Fiction? No. It is a realistic poem about the events of war
What is the audience? Anyone that has anything to do with war, or that just enjoys reading poems about it.
What is the purpose of the poem? The purpose is to bring people to sing while marching towards death, because we walk towards it no matter what.
Where is it set? Most likely in between fields, on the way to a battle.
What’s going on? Soldiers are marching and singing.
Given circumstances: are unclear because it is a poem that has a specific meaning and theme but doesn’t give anything about what happened before or what will happen after. One could imagine that previous battles have been fought and most likely lost because they know they’re likely to die. It seems as though they’re marching towards a failure.
Step 3:
WHO is speaking? A soldier, maybe an officer since he has the right to animate people to sing.
TO WHOM is he speaking? To the other soldiers.
WHAT is their situation? They’re at war, they’re about to fight and die in battle.
WHERE is the setting? In the fields
Tone? Joyous: O sing etc but also a bit cynical: Give your gladness to earth’s keeping, so be glad when you are sleeping.
Diction: positive ‘blossomed’, ‘glad’, ‘joyful’….
What patterns? Structure? Rhyme scheme, not on the same level.
Contrasts: between death and sleep
PURPOSE?SO WHAT? The importance of the above is that the speaker tries to make something sad such as death make sound lighter and more bearable by singing.
Step 4: Organize the close reading questions.
Step 5: Implication of dominant effect
Step 6: Outline of the commentary
Thesis: The poem shows the unbearable lightness of being of a soldier that is about to go towards a possible death. This is shown through the use of tone, diction and contrast.
First paragraph: The use of diction shows how the speaker is trying to convince his comrades to lighten up and sing even if death is laughing in their face.
- ‘bursting’ into song
- ‘singers are the chaps’
- ‘O sing’
- ‘gladness’
- Sing with ‘joyful’ breath
- All the ‘gladness’ that you pour.
- Earth that ‘blossomed’ and was ‘glad’
- Be ‘merry’
Second paragraph: The speakers tone lightens the darkness of death.
- ‘so be merry, so be dead’
- ‘little live, great pass’
- ‘So be glad, when you are sleeping’
- ‘So sing with joyful breath’
- ‘On the road to death, sing!’
- ‘shall rejoice and blossom too when the bullet reaches you’
Third paragraph: The contrast between the death and song as mentioned in the previous paragraphs
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