The Artilleryman’s Vision Analysis
Walt Whitman’s “The Artilleryman’s Vision” is a poem centering around the struggles and memories experienced by a war veteran, long after he had finished his tour of duty. The narrator begins the poem by explaining his current surroundings, at home with his family, and progresses by recalling many of his wartime experiences. The speaker is most likely afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder, and his disturbing experiences on the field of battle still haunt him. Whitman uses a variety of figurative language throughout the poem to transport his audience onto the battlefield with him, helping them understand his experiences exactly how he remembers them. I believe that Walt Whitman uses a unique rhyme scheme involving repetition, figurative language such as similes and onomatopoeias, and a haunting and chilling mood to convey to the reader the meaning that war will last forever and cannot be avoided.
Whitman’s poem doesn’t have much of a rhyme scheme, but uses elements such as repetition to help the narrator tell his story. The narrator focuses heavily on his different senses and actions as he recounts his experiences, and many lines of the poem begin with “I.” For example, repetition is found in the beginning of the poem where the speaker informs the reader that “[he] hear[s], just hear[s], the voice of [his infant].” Throughout the rest of the poem, repetition and alliteration are present as the narrator speaks of his different actions and notes his sensory details. For example, the author informs us of how “[he] hear[s] the sounds of the different missiles,” “[he] see[s] the shells exploding,” and “[he] breathe[s] the suffocating smoke.” The repeated “I” emphasizes to the audience the different senses used by the speaker and isolates the different sensory details in the audience’s mind. The fact that the artilleryman is able to remember such specific details about the war after such a long time shows that the war...