Dear Beloved,
It has been two weeks since I wrote to you last; the war has been difficult and tiring. For days, we fight, shoot, and kill, for no more than a mile or two to gain from the trenches. Most of the time we are up to our knees in water. My love, I do not know if I may come back, and if I do, if I’ll come back sane and whole. Many men have lost limbs and acquired sicknesses like trench foot. Most have lost their lives. Do you remember Aurthor? The young lad down on OakMill Road? A skinny but nice fellow. At night when my squad and I were fixing the barbed wire, one of our soldiers accidently shot him through the head, it was terrible love. He must have been about 20. The paranoia is getting to everyone, as I write this with my unquiet hand; I constantly look around, haring a noise or seeing some shadow pass by. It’s not only the Germans that we must keep an eye out for, the rats might be just as frightening as any German out on the field. My love, I am grateful you do not have my eyes, for they have seen so much death and pain. There are men dead, like cattle, on the sides of roads and in the trenches, rotting for days before we can bury them. We use the corpses to stand on to get out of the water, and set them on top of the trenches so we don’t have to crawl.
I feel as if all humanity is gone, and that we are becoming animals out here. The rats feed on their flesh, I’ve seen one, we named him Ronny, and he’s as big as the cat Flory that is probably purring in your lap. I would write more my dear, but though I cannot, I have lice on me night and day that is becoming unsettling, Joey has agreed to use the candle light to burn them off, I know it’s dangerous, for many men have caught on fire, but with so many things wrong, taking the risk now is worth it. At least at the end of the war, the Germans are also getting sick and tired, and at some times, we find the sickness of this War and just stop fighting, the other day we had cigarettes with a German, no one shot. We are becoming tired of the war. No one smiles anymore, we’ve lost too much. Hopefully, we may see each other soon. I love you. Your Dearest John
The Essay on Break of Day in the Trenches Analysis
In the poem, “Break of Day in the Trenches”, the author, Isaac Rosenberg shows the theme that endless conflict leads emotionally numb soldiers to snap, through the literary devices, tone and personification. Tone is used by Rosenberg to furthermore reveal the theme in this poem. The two that he uses are musing and contemplative tones. The author uses the air of musing in this poem throughout the ...
