SPECS AND SLIMS – An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

Summary • Describes a war • He is talking about how he can predict his death Purpose • To inform the reader about how he only has a neutral feeling towards the war, he doesn’t hate, nor love anyone that he is fighting and guarding • He wants to say how war has affected how he is seeing life, and that it has lead him to be able to see when he will die Emotion • Sadness • Sympathy Craftsmanship • William Butler Yeats has used many techniques to carry across the message of war to the reader • He achieves these effects well because of the different words and techniques he has incorporated into this poem. Some specific techniques Yeats uses in this poem are imagery, euphemism and rhyme. Imagery can get the reader to paint a picture in their mind and imagine that they are there. Euphemism makes the poem more subtle, for example instead of saying death, he says fate (1st line) Structure • 16 lines in the poem • 1 stanza Language • 1st person • Emotive • Formal • Euphemism (1st line) • Last 4 lines of the poem – William Butler Yeats uses a chiasmus Imagery • Example – Line 2 “Somewhere among the clouds above;” shows an image of him flying in a plane • All the lines represent war and death Movement • There was an ab ab rhyming pattern • No significant sound features Sound • Rhyme • Example – Line 12 “Drove this tumult in the clouds” suggests planes flying over, and you can hear the jet engines Summary • This poem makes me feel angry about war because of all the emotive language about a soldier who has no emotion or feeling for going to war • It also makes me feel sad and sympathetic towards the soldier because he can detect when he will die and that his best mate had been killed in action • I feel this poem was successful in carrying the message of war and death across • I feel that it does achieve the poet’s purpose of informing people about war, because of all the different techniques he has used to get the reader to feel more like they are in the shoes of the solider