5. rain

• poem summary

  soldier hopes for salvation from war he will have to fight in soon in a rainy hut

  thomas uses weather to set maudlin tone of poem

  speaker hopes for religious purification in the deluge of rain
• rain repetition (e.g first line)

  repetition: enforces inundation of water

  resonates with movement of storm
• bleak hut

  lexical choice

  something purgatorial about the hut: it is his waiting place before slaughter

  making him nihilistic
• solitude repetition

  repetition

  drills loneliness into reader's mind the same way it is drilled into speaker's own mind after watching fellow soldiers die

  stresses sheer isolation felt in this moment
• i shall die

  modal verb

  retains a morbid, definitive finality

  accentuates fatalistic mentality of speaker
• enjambment 'me / remembering again'

  enjambment

  sore reminder of the abruptness of loss of life synonymous with conflict

  lines glide into each other in the wash of waterfall
• like a cold water among broken reeds

  biblical allusion to book of isaiah

  here, isaiah speaks to the mortal nature of all things

  relates to thomas' despondent position pondering the significance of mortality as he awaits battle and realises the insignificance of his own life as a pawn in the triumph of the nation
• no love which this wild rain has not dissolved except the love of death

  lexical choice: dissolved

  connotations of dissolution: irrelevance of insubstantial things we hold dear like optimism

  perhaps speake is being eroded of his own character

  
  

  speaker's hopefulness has been perniciously dissolved, leaving only a primal lust for violence

  perhaps speaker wants rain to absolve him of sin through religious salvation
• if love it be towards what is perfect

  consonance (t)

  gentle and meditative; composes a controlled, steady tone

  speaker is at a nihilistic peace with the vulgar battle

  rain has dissolved his morality, leaving him only with 'love' for death
• Themes

  allusion to death/futility of life

  rain as a symbol of dissolution of all that is good

  loneliness