Explication of Diane Thiels The Minefield :: essays research papers

Diane Thiels song The Minefield is about a man whos mind has been ravaged by memories of a war in his childhood. She shows that even though the war had been all over for years, the memory of it haunted the man in everything that he did. Through a powerful combination of symbols, dark images, and a split chronology, she creates a wide picture of a life changed forever by war.In the first off stanza, the t whizz is lighter, describing a scene where two boys are running by dint of towns. The boys race, the faster one being described as a stormy rabbit. This stanza feels dream wish, the organization of thought is loose, and word choice seems some erratic, almost unrehearsed. The first stanza ends with a twist. The faster boy is killed by a mine and his friend, just seconds behind, witnesses the whole thing.The second stanza is only two lines, My paternity told us this, one night,/and then continued eating dinner. This stanza breaks up the chronology of the poem, move the previ ous stanza into the past, and making it disjointed, almost like another poem in itself. The result of the father continuing eating after he tells the theme shows how dead he is inside, the recalling of the story no longer affecting him in the same way it does the reader and his own family. It is implied that he is the only one able to eat after telling the story. This short stanza foreshadows the fathers personality change.In the third stanza, the language becomes much darker, words like anger, explode, and against make this stanza seem even more warlike than the first stanza.