Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem is written in first person narration, from the point of view of a soldier on the battle field.
Form and Meter
The poem consists of 16 lines of roughly equal length and no rhyme scheme.
Metaphors and Similes
The bullet can be seen as a metaphor for the horrors of war. The way the bullet is personified and given evil intent makes allows it to be a placeholder for all the powers behind the war, the politicians and businessmen profiting off it.
Alliteration and Assonance
The final line of the poem contains the phrase "where the world ends, every time". The alliteration of ends and every allows the impact of these words to be strengthened.
Irony
The fact that the soldier is inviting the bullet in to harm him can be seen as ironic. This irony allows the soldier to triumph over the bullet, even in death, through their strong mental state.
Genre
War poetry
Setting
Timing is unknown, the location is any battlefield after the invention of gunpowder
Tone
Gruesome and challenging
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the soldier, the antagonist is the bullet
Major Conflict
The major conflict of the poem is between the soldiers will to live on and the bullet's mission to kill, to maim.
Climax
The climax of the poem can be found in the defiance of the soldier when the bullet destroys the soldier's own insides.
Foreshadowing
The first line of the poem foreshadows the defiance that the soldier shows in the final lines.
Understatement
The phrase "the word you bring" can be interpreted as an understatement of the destruction and death caused by bullets.
Allusions
The final line of the poem alludes to the destructive force of war.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The first part of the poem uses different organs to describe the whole destructive force of war on the body. The second part uses the tongue and the oesophagus to describe the whole process of sound production in the human body.
Personification
The bullet is personified as the antagonist in the poem.
Hyperbole
The description of the human mind's reaction to being hit as a type of rifle can be seen as a hyperbole. This allows the narrator to give more power to the human than the bullet.
Onomatopoeia
The description of the bullet's entry into the body uses words like snap and gristle. These were originally an onomatopoeia.
