Comparison

• ‘haunting flares’

   

  The Manhunt

  The Soldier

  The adjective ‘haunting’ emphasises the nightmares of war the men would experience afterwards. The collective noun

  ‘flares’ has connotations of an SOS flare, sent up to indicate to others you need help. In this instance, the flares are the fires and blasts created by bombs, which contrast
• ‘Men marched asleep’

  
  

  Mametz Wood

  with the use of an SOS flare. Ironically, they are in trouble, but no help will come.

  Alliteration of the ‘m’ sound is used to produce the sound of a tired, trudging walk on the muddy ground. This metaphor emphasises the extreme tiredness of the soldiers –they were walking and were so tired, they were barely even awake or aware of what they were doing.
• ‘under a green sea’

  Mametz Wood

  This metaphor describes the way the gas smothers the field and the men in it. The assonance in ‘green’ and ‘sea’ elongates the vowel sound, which mimics the action of the men suffocating from the gas, as they slowly collapse on the ground and die.
• ‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning’

  Perhaps the most disturbing image of the poem, as a dying soldier reaches out and falls, his lungs filling with his own blood after ingesting the gas. The asyndetic list that describes how the soldier is dying becomes more powerful and more horrific through the use of onomatopoeic words like ‘guttering’.