The Poem
The poem lays out the events of the conflict in chronological order. The poetry features elegant verse writing, a graceful expression expressing strong emotion and image quality, with emotional intensity and honesty, and is a work of art with exceptional beauty and high quality. The poem provides a profound understanding that causes the reader to idealize reality and see situations or things in a particular manner. Gurney shares his thoughts and emotions in a way that makes the reader happy. The poem starts off with a descriptive statement where Gurney’s narrates that the first three weeks were hard since the whether seem to be poor (freezing). The author highlights tough times since the weather was cold, they were both hungry, and their feet were sore. The poem leaves the reader glued to trying to understand what could happen next. The persona narrates how they walk around despite the fact that they were feeling weak and hungry.
The Retreat
The retreat is a quality of great poetry because the system and creed of the human values are well expressed a fact that leaves the reader ultimately rejoiced and enlightened. The Retreat offers a better avenue of freeing someone from evil, misdeed, and ignorance while it encourages and inspires the reader; the poem brings out noble thoughts but vividly expressing the environment in which the persona leaves. Despite the fact that the persona, in this case, presents a case of war, the poem is presented humorously. The Retreat instills a noblethought by dwelling much on how people live which is not quite different from the present society.
Gurney's Unusual Insight
Gurney is a possessor of unusual insight and thoughts. He can express thing romantically and beautifully. He is an artistic, creative and an imaginative individual. High imagination and perception with profound insight are what makes the difference between the layman and the poet. The poet states that the soldiers “walk off the ingestion after having meals just like millionaires (GURNEY 132).” The narration also offers step by step flow of events and an interaction of individuals in what seems to be a tough place. Gurney narrates how they are moving at will but yet comradely though they were hungry, their feet sore, and the weather was cold. Gurney has the greatest capacity to receive a sense of impression about his expression of the tough times and a powerful feeling. The way Gurney idealizes the reality and represents the chronology of events according to rouses the reader’s admiration for the art of poetry. The verses in The Retreat are of much significance and value to reveal the reality of life. The crushing upshot, the struggles in life are revealed in the verses of these poems. Despite the fact that things are tough the author highlights the importance of comradeship and forging ahead. Gurney intended to console by adopting a great power and appeal to delight the reader while passing a critical message on the events that take place during the war. This leads the readers to interpret and understand what has been written.
Revealing Reality
Gurney can reveal reality from this poem. The Retreat reveals emotions that are otherwise hard to reveal in words. The author adopts the use of metaphors and other abstract to provoke a deep sense of meaning that is engulfed in them. Despite the fact that the author was in a mental institution, he is in a position to express his feeling that portrays a sense of confinement and struggle. The Retreat incites individuals to see beyond the whistle and bells that have been deliberately removed, a fact that forces the reader to imagine and concentrate the word that can be included in the poem to complete the missing spaces or the unsaid thoughts (Hühn and Kiefer 21). The poem gives the present readers a glimpse of the past generations. The author states that individuals in this age went to war with horses. The poem captures the theme of war that is quite different from typical life. From the poem, certain people seem to leave in confinement (the imprisoned Germany Soldiers) while other soldiers leave in harsh conditions. The author describes the events that some people dig pits in an environment that is cold. However, the poems end on a good note when the soldiers arrived in the downward slope and so hope because of the new environment.
Pure Magic
The poem stands out to be pure magic because it adopts the common currency of the normal life. The poem adopts words that are known to the reader, but in an order and sequence that surprises out of the normal linear thought process and speech rhythm. The effect of this poem illuminates breath of new life and our lives. The poems create a clear distinction between the present and the past times. The poem bids the readers to eat the apple whole. The poem nourishes our imagination and reaches with its rims down below the realm of conscious mind.
Madness
The poet says that he climbed weak-kneed and saw a fallow that was unploughed. This is a contradictory and ambiguous statement that does not bring out a precise meaning. A fallow by itself means a land that is ploughed but has not been activated. A fallow cannot be unploughed, and this makes the sentence not make sense. The writer then says that German prisoners passed defiantly. He does not specify where he was climbing while seeing the fallow and the prisoners. He could have specified whether it was a tree or a mountain. The reader cannot deduce the meaning of the sentence in relation to the theme of the poem. He said that one of the prisoners passed them merrily. The prisoners were resisting in the moving and cannot be gaily at the same time.
Ivor vulgar says that free men were cursing and digging with silk vigor and furious pace. Previously, he said that the prisoners were passing heading to the fallow. From that, readers could deduce that the prisoners are being taken to cultivate the land. At the same time, he is talking about free men ploughing which contradicts the theme of the war. The prisoners were the ones taken to cultivate the land but not the free men from the town. This brings out the madness in the statements because there is no meaning when talking about free men and prisoners at the same time. He goes ahead and says that the freemen were promised dismissal on the early end. The theme is lost as the reader cannot understand what the poet is all about. Is he talking about the prisoners or the free men? The question remains unanswered in the minds of the readers (Hurd 67).
There is a sense of insanity in the poem by Ivor Gurney. Some sentences in the poem do not make sense. This proves that he was in a mental institution when writing the poem. On the sentence where Ivor said that he shot straight at the middle of the men and missed the target does not make sense. It shows insanity and madness as if he was out of his senses. The writer says that he believes men can be shot through the middle bodies. By stating that he missed the target implies he is not sure of what he says. It is contradictory to say that he shot straight and missed the target. The enemies that Ivor was imagining were posts. His imaginations were too wrong that he took posts to mean people.
The poet was insane to believe that the belly cannot be shot through by a small bullet. He says this to mean it was hard to hit posts and other echoing objects. He thought that the posts had bellies that are hard for the bullet to penetrate through. It is not true that the bullet will not penetrate the belly regardless of the size of the bullet. He believed that the man would not have any wound after being shot in the belly.
There is a sense of madness when the poet says he sees new hope in the hunger, disgust fear and weakness. The statements before hope are negative and imply the giving up. Instead of him having a sense of hope, he should say his hopes were ending. The reader from reading previous statements before hope may think about a sad ending. In poetry, one sentence implies the other one. This means that from reading about his hunger, and weakness, they should deduce the poet was in a difficult situation and no hope. The readers cannot deduce the end after reading the previous statements. This fails in poetry laws as the poem needs to make sense (Hurd 67).
From reading the first line of the last stanza, the reader cannot get the meaning of the poet. The poet is talking by himself, things that do not make sense. He is talking about the machine gun, sticks, wood, wires, shells which are not part of the theme. The theme of the poem is about war, but he is talking about multiple things which were not mentioned in the previous stanzas. It would make sense if he mentioned the machine gun alone because it relates to other stanzas (Hipp 54).
The bayonet cannot be tangled in the ear. The bayonet is fitted at the muzzle of the rifle but cannot be intertwined in the ear. The statement is ambiguous when read and loses the meaning of the theme. The poet says that the bayonet was hurting his ribs. The ears and the ribs have no connection. It would make sense if the write said the bayonet was hurting his right ears but not the ribs. There is no connection between the two body parts. The statement is mixed and does not bring out any meaning (Hipp 54).
Works Cited
GURNEY, I. "Poem." Music and Letters, vol. VIII, no. 2, 1927, pp. 103-103, doi:10.1093/ml/viii.2.103.
Hipp, Daniel. The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon. McFarland, 2005.
Hühn, P., and J. Kiefer. "The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry." 2005, doi:10.1515/9783110897623.
Hurd, Michael. The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney. Faber & Faber, 2011.
