Why Soldiers Don't Talk
What tone does the author have throughout the text?
detached, clinical, and slightly scientific, thoughtful
How does Jarrell’s use of understatement heighten the poem’s emotional and rhetorical impact on the audience?
The portrayal of the event through restrained language heightens the sense of injustice as readers instinctively know that death deserves more than this indifference.
What is the tone of the opening passage?
Confessional and conflicted
How does Steinbeck’s use of comparison in the line “ A woman is said to feel the same way when she tries to remember what childbirth was like” help clarify the psychological effect of war?
It compares war trauma to childbirth to show how the mind naturally forgets severe pain especially after traumatic events
Why might Jarrell have chosen to make the tone detached and factual rather than emotional?
Jarrell’s detached, factual tone mirrors the war machine’s indifference. Withdrawing sympathy draws in the audience's own emotion and makes them feel the dehumanization more personally.
Why does O’Brien use the first-person perspective?
He establishes his character, making the story more personal and it draws the reader into his internal conflict.
!!!SPECIAL QUESTIONS!!!
What is the reason for the shift in POV?
("them" -> "you)
To make it more personal
How does Jarrell use the metaphor of birth and the womb to comment on war and the dehumanization of soldiers?
Jarrell's use of the birth and womb metaphor reveals the dehumanization of soldiers and shows how the State transforms human life and creation into instruments of war, reducing human life to something expendable and under its control.
Stemming from the conversation with his daughter, what effect does the reflective tone of the passage have on the audience?
The introspective style turns the audience into confidants, prompting them to both consider what happened and feel the weight and memory of regret.
Why does Steinbeck use scientific words like “nervous system” and “protective mechanisms”?
to logically explain how war and trauma affects soldiers in both physically and psychologically
What effect does the poem’s final image “washed me out of the turret with a hose” have on the reader?
The flat, procedural phrasing shocks by reducing death to routine cleanup, confronting the reader with the war machine’s indifference and dehumanization.
!!!SPECIAL QUESTION!!!
What is the purpose of O’Brien’s graphic description of the wounded soldier?
Reveal the narrator’s psychological trauma, internal conflict, and to humanize the enemy rather than praising violence
What type of imagery does Steinbeck use and what does the use of imagery help show the audience?
Intense and descriptive imagery helps show the audience what the soldiers went through physically and emotionally, and helps let the readers feel empathy and compassion.
!!SPECIAL QUESTION!!
What does Jarrell’s portrayal of the soldier and the war machine suggest about his attitude toward war?
Jarrell condemns modern war by portraying it as a system that takes over the individual in order to achieve military objectives and then disposes of them without compassion.
The repeated phrase “I did not..” best reveals the narrator’s what?
His guilt, and his attempt to prove his guilt, also showing that he has regret of what happened