We can also see the use of onomatopoeia when MacNeice says, “to the hooting of lost sirens and the clam of trams.” MacNeice says in the third stanza that there was a stinking smell of chlorine and his lights looked over the Lough to the lights of Bangor, from this we can tell that he lived in a industrial town and he doesn’t look it to much as he says the smell stinks, and the yarn-mill called it’s funeral cry at noon. In the next stanza MacNeice says that the church is to the blame for all the wrongs going on, I assume he says this because he doesn’t like the church but I believe he genuinely doesn’t think the church is too blame. All throughout this poem, MacNeice mentions the Normans various times; I think that he is emphasizing his knowledge of Irish history. MacNeice also tells us that his father was a rector and he was banned forever from the candles of the Irish poor; again he is showing divisions by saying the Irish are poor. In this same stanza he talks about the Chichesters who are a rich Irish family.
The war then starts and Louis uses sensory images; sight and sound. The sight images he uses are the horse with long Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice, and the sound images he uses is sentry’s challenge echoing all day long. These images make the poem more realistic. He then goes on and states that a Yorkshire terrier ran to the gate lodge, marched at ease and sang, “Who killed Cock Robin”? The troops then went out to the lodge and off to the front, the information he is giving us here isn’t too significant but it does give us an account off some troops at the time of the war. It also became clear that the 1st world war was a cataclysmic event in MacNeice’s Life.
The last three stanzas’ is written from a child’s perspective and we also get another example of enjambement
That would be the last time that Louis MacNeice would ever step foot in Ireland again as he soon leaves for England in a Carlisle train as his parents don’t want him to be in Ireland but in school in England. The child MacNeice thought, “the war would last forever and sugar would always be rationed and that never again would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags and governess not make bandages from moss and people not have maps above there fireplace with flags on pins moving across and across,” When I read this I realized that MacNeice was happy to get out of Ireland as he constantly badmouths it and barely has a good words say about it. In the second last stanza, MacNeice shows his memory is working clearly by distinctively remembering everything that happened at that time. In the final stanza, the word puppet is important as it’s mimicking the adult world and the last two lines show MacNeice sadness.
Overall, MacNeice Had quite a sad time in Ireland as he was brought up through lots of divisions and through the war.