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War Photographer Analysis
English Studies
High School - Canada
• 11High School - Canada
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War Photographer Analysis In Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “War Photographer”, a troubled man in his own unsettling thoughts disputes the merit of his job as a war photographer and the undervalued position he carries out as a living. The mood/atmosphere being produced as well as the narrated visual, auditory, and religious imagery within the poem highlight the concept of traumatizing effects haunting an individual when perceiving anguish in war at first hand. In the first stanza, multiple references towards religious imagery help establish the main contention that observing death in war has a series of traumatizing effects that haunts an individual. For instance, the red light of a church is mentioned through the use of a simile when the speaker is comparing it to the red light of his darkroom. This implements a symbolic idea of the red colour visual to represent blood foreshadowing the mention of “blood stained”(18) later in the poem. The simile linking the religious visual to the photographer’s darkroom expresses his thoughts of a church when developing “spools of suffering” (2) meaning his notion was towards God whilst grasping at the agony within the photographs haunting him knowing he was the one who had captured them. Additionally, he uses a metaphor to equate himself placing photographs to observe to “a priest preparing to intone a Mass”(5) creating a second attention drawing religious imagery due to the alliteration present in ‘priest preparing’ and the capitalized letter in the word ‘Mass’. The metaphor can also be interpreted to have a double meaning, in which the priest could literally be preparing for a mass in honour of the lost lives and he, the photographer, is preparing the images to display in the church out of respect and honour towards the soldiers who he solemnly watched suffer and
pass away at war. This resulted in an unsettling battle within himself which provoked a traumatizing effect for having to be first hand capturing the deathly moments in front of him. Another major association to religious imagery is when the photographer says “All flesh is grass” (6), asthis quote exemplifies an allusion between this literature piece and a quote from the book of Isaih in the Old Testament. The quote asserts that the human body always returns to grass or ground, similarly to the battlefield this photographer was in, surrounded with bodies; implanting this startling and disturbing image in his mind that burdens him constantly. Thus, religious visual imagery conveys the matter of coming to be emotionally distressed when watching the loss of a life directly in front of you. In the process of maintaining a theme of traumatizing effects nagging the mind of a man when being a witness to death in war, the speaker then used the literary device of visual and auditory imagery to help further prove this thematic idea. To illustrate this point, aural imagery is portrayed when the photographer “remembers the cries of this man’s wife, how he sought approval without words to do what one must”(15-17). The quote demonstrates aural imagery as the cries of this suffering woman while she mourns the loss of her husband though at the same time the photographer senses this is a moment to photograph despite the tragedy he empathizes for. He also uses compelling diction such as the word “must”(17) to showcase that he has an obligation to perform regardless of the tormented constraints happening before his eyes that are scarring his emotional health. In the same way, sight imagery is also displayed in the visualization of “a hundred agonies in black and white”(19) giving the reader a vivid image showing dead bodies stripped of colour. This intensifies a phantom like imagery conveying the thematic idea of an individual being haunted from agonizing events
addition, an ambivalent aura is created simultaneously as the speaker exclaims “he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care” (23-24) causing the reader to feel the uncertainty of the war photographer through the tone the author uses to display the overall atmosphere as the character is questioning his job and queries why his job is so uncared for and undervalued in the eyes of society as he is traumatizing himself and damaging his mental well-being everyday just to make a living out of this. Thereby the overall negative atmosphere and mood the reader encounters in the poem emphasizes the constant haunt of traumatic implications encountered by people who see the anguish of countless soldiers in war. From reference to the mood/atmosphere being created along with portrayed visual, auditorial and religious imagery in the poem “War Photographer” by Carol Ann Duffy, it can be concluded that a thematic idea of damaging impacts negatively affecting a person when experiencing the sight of torment in a war battlefield to the extent that haunting and mentally traumatizing images often scar individuals is overall displayed and reasoned.
War Photographer Analysis
Subject: English Studies
High School - Canada
• 11
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