John Foulcher

Human violence can be just as great as nature's violence. Foulcher demonstrates this in Martin and the Hand Grenade where he emphasises the tragedy war brings and the violence it creates. Foulcher also describes the aggressive Lock Ard Gorge as 'tide thrust into the interior of the earth' as if the gorge is a black hole of evil. The interior of the earth suggests darkness while the powerful word 'thrust' implies the great strength that nature holds and the violence it is capable of causing.

In Martin and the Hand Grenade we can interpret the whole poem as a question of human nature. Are humans actually born with the tendency to aggression, a desire for violence and power? Or is it an attitude that children learn from their families and peers? Is it something that most men grow out of as they mature and become civilised? It is a mixture of these that have brought out the creation of the hand grenade.

The hand grenade possesses the power to kill. In fact, its entire purpose is to do so, and thus John Foulcher gives us the idea of death throughout the poem. The narrator, likely to be Foulcher himself, feels sorrow for those that were impacted by weapons of murder such as the hand grenade. The children, however, do not take notice of the deaths that come to mind when thinking of war.

Through the theme of death he presents his view that life is precious. "The spread became too loose to catch a man's mortality." This line gives importance to human life, recognising the significance of just one man's escape from death.

Another notion of death arises when Foulcher writes "The dead weapon hurls." The hand grenade may be disarmed now in the classroom; however, it still carries the impression that deaths could have been inflicted. It also creates the feeling that the grenade is 'live' again.

Foulcher then acknowledges the boys' lives. That one day death may come to their close ones and that they may be succumbed to war as adults. Foulcher writes "tears the heart apart" indicating that these boys' hearts may be tared apart or in tears in the future. Whose heart would be torn? Who would be shedding tears?[don't]

Foulcher also includes the theme of death in Lock Ard Gorge. He conveys his ideas of death as he writes of a true event. "Hammocks of bone and meat...lugged from the sea and dumped in the soil." He has put loaded words together to show the brutal impersonality of death. These completely normal human beings not long before became soggy bundles of lifeless bone and meat when they were lugged from the sea. Foulcher tries to express the fear of the unpleasant view of death and thus forces the thought of death to be very uncomfortable. Most people have a deep superstitious fear of death and dead people. Even when it is people we know and love, we try to avoid the reality of death by dressing it up with a beautiful coffin and flowers.

Man's lack of respect for past events is also put across in Lock Ard Gorge. Foulcher reminds us of the shipwreck; although it was an event hundreds of years ago, we are told that the people have been just 'lugged' from the sea and 'dumped' in the soil. How is this respectable treatment of the innocent sufferers? There is not even the suggestion of sorrow or mourning.

Foulcher grumbles again in Martin and the Hand Grenade where he is the only one thinking of the past events. What really happened during the wars? The children do not see the truth behind the grenade. They are so bewildered by the weapon's great power to kill that they do not realise the actual brutality of the deaths that weapons such as these can cause - that one life is extremely precious. Even though the history class itself has come alive, it is not the actual history that the boys see.

Through the poems Lock Ard Gorge, Martin and the Hand Grenade, Summer Rain and For the Fire, Foulcher expresses his messages about nature and humans combined with history by inserting multiple meanings to almost every word. He puts forward that that we lack respect for past events, nature and humans have similarities in the way that violence occurs, and that death is brutal.