Jones 1
Fred Jones
Mr. Lusk
10 Honors English
14 November 2018
“Corpses in the Woods”
Lyrical poetry is often associated with powerful, positive emotions such as love and honor. However, in the shadow of tremendous and difficult wars, many poets have used lyric poetry to express negative emotions connected with their life experiences. One particular poet who uses poetry in this cathartic manner is Ernst Toller, a German soldier during World War One. The speaker in his poem “Corpses in the Woods” cries out a warning to those he feels are most impacted by the death and destruction of warfare. This poem uses strong, vivid imagery, intense figurative language, and very specific sound devices to create a tone of horror and disgust.
The poem begins with a stark line of intense imagery, “A dung heap of rotting corpses” (l. 1). The speaker does not waste any time providing an image that is as powerful as it is meaningful. He just as quickly paints a picture of the horror with visual images of glazed, bloodshot eyes, and “Brains split, guts spewed out”(l. 3). Later in the poem, Toller describes the ‘swollen’ bodies and ‘torn’ hands of soldiers who have become “stiff in death” (l. 11). Visual images alone do not tell the story and he continues to describe the “poisoned air” filled with the “stink of corpses” (l. 4). The speaker emphasizes these images with a “single awful cry of madness” (l. 5), a madness that he shares. In essence, this poem acts as his cry from the front lines to sound a warning to the women left at home. The tone of horror is unmistakable. Imagery is not the only tool that Toller utilizes to express this tone.
Another tool that Toller uses to emphasize the horrors of warfare and to create his dreadful tone is figurative language. His direct and implied metaphors emphasize the impact that the war has not only on armies, but also individual soldiers. The opening metaphor in the poem compares the corpses of soldiers to a “dung heap”. Toller suggests that brave soldiers have become nothing more than rotten, cast off garbage. The dehumanizing effect is taken one step further as the speaker, obviously a soldier who experiences these horrible events, questions his very being, “Am I a beast, a murderous dog?” (l. 15). This metaphor, in the form of a rhetorical question, further asserts the tone suggesting disgust and disillusionment. The most impressive metaphor however, compares enemies to brothers who “embrace each other” (l. 11) in an ironic death grip that illustrates the destructive and horrible effects of war. These metaphors underscore the bitter tone of the poem. Imagery and figurative language are not the only devices at Toller’s disposal.
One final method Toller uses to express a negative, depressing tone is the use of repetition and sound devices. In the first stanza, Toller utilizes consonance with a repeating ‘s’ sound that effectively mimics the gas that escapes from the dead bodies, “corpses [with] glazed eyes, bloodshot/…Brains split, guts spewed out/…poisoned by…stink” (ll. 2-4). This consonance emphasizes the mutilation of the corpses and further develops Toller’s negative tone. Repetition takes place in several instances, yet most impressively in the last stanza, “I see, I see” (l. 14). The speaker is now resigned to the horror that he has experienced in warfare and he repeats this realization as a sort of anguished cry.
From its title until its last line, ‘murdered’, “Corpses in the Woods” by Ernst Toller uses a variety of poetic techniques to establish and develop a depressing tone of horror and disgust. The imagery of rotting corpses suggests the horror of the destructive battles the speaker has experienced. Impressive metaphors, both direct and implied, help to further develop the horror. Finally, the poetic sound devices and repetition of the entire poem establish the horrifying monotony of the destruction of warfare. Lyric poems such as “Corpses in the Woods” are perhaps the most effective methods artists have to effectively represent the horrible tone created by war.