French Prisoner
... shrunk to the bone” meaning, that he has never seen a human being this deteriorated and mistreated that it is almost etched on to his mind. The persona is also disgusted by the fact that the French prisoner is so hungry that he has to resort to eating a raw cattle turnip, and his stomach can’t even digest it. In the poem, The French Prisoner, the persona shows empathy towards the prisoner when he sees how the prisoner is behaving. In a way, the persona is almost ‘dehumanising’ him when he calls him “that poor creature. And says “his clumsy feet have been left out of the gibbering, bestial elation” meaning he is more a beast than a human. The empathy from the person is also shown when he recalls “ the organs savaging each other, forced to tear their last shreds of kinship” almost as if the prisoners is dying from the inside, right before his very eyes. The persona, after seeing the French Prisoner and recalling his memory of those events, has almost become insane or psychologically disturbed. He almost feels guilty and the memory of the French prisoner is him in the same position, when he says “And from my ears, from my eyes, my mouth the scorching memory roars at me: I am hungry!” The persona id feeling guilty and thinks that the memory of the prisoner is on him and he has to ‘feed it’ but he is guilty because he is become less of a help. He even says “He lives on me. And more and more hungrily! And I am less and less suffi...