The Battle Of Blenheim - How Does The Poet Make His Viewpoint Clear?

younger child. While in contrast, Old Kaspar takes finding skulls as an ordinary occurrence in his every day life. In the fourth verse the atmosphere in the poem changes, we see how Old Kaspar is not affected by the discovery of a man’s skull. We see this by Old Kaspar ‘shaking his head, with a natural sigh’. This is also the first verse were the great victory is mentioned.  In verse four we hear of some horrific things; that 1000 men were slain in the great victory. Even with us knowing this the mood of the poem still stays casual. Old Kaspar prefers not to question what he is thinking off, as he likes to think of the victory as just being great. We see the generation gap in verse 5, with the innocence of childhood coming through. Little Wilhelmine stays inquisitive and asks about what happened. We see his innocence through his expectant ‘wonder waiting eyes’. Kaspar does not know the answer to the question but stays insistent that the reason for the war was good. We see the futility of war, as just 100 hundred years after the war they cant even remember why they were fighting in the first place. We see how patriotic Old Kaspar is, and how he describes the win over the French as a rout meaning total destruction. Verse seven tells a personal story about how the war affected Old Kaspar. This verse also goes into detail about shocking occurrences that happened during this war and how civilians were also affected. We hear off even more gruesome details of civilians being affected when we are told ‘and new-born babies died’. Yet still Old Kaspar refers to the victory as being a famous victory. Powerful imagery is also given to us when we are told about ‘for many a thousand bodies here, lay rotting in the sun’. The Poem ends with the poets voice coming through the children. The children have not been taken in by the indoctrination that Old Kaspar has been telling them. This shows the difference in the generations and how people are becoming more inquisitive and are questioning things about the futility of war. Old Kaspar shows ignorance towards the question and just repeats the line ‘twas a famous victory. The poet is making his viewpoint clear by showing that war is futile. People forget why all these people died in a short space of time. It also shows how not only are the people fighting in the war affected but also innocent civilians can lose everything they own including their lives. The poet also likes to tell us alit about the generation gap, and how people in the next generation gap are less expecting. Billy Fogarty™