TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > "Dead Mans Dump" - Issac Rosenburg
In "Dead Man's Dump," you see the wheels of a truck crushing bones already perished. "The wheels lurched over the sprawling dead," they are driving over a battle field to pick up the survivors. The drivers of the truck are playing the role of God, by coming and saving the soldier's from death. Another reference to God in the same poem is when Rosenberg refers to the "limbers," wheels of a cannon being pulled, carrying the dead as "Stuck out like many crowns of thorns," symbolizing Jesus's crown of thorns that he wore at his crucifixion. Finally they hear a sound, one of the soldier is still alive. He begs the cavalry to hasten their search and find him. The troops hear him and begin to come barreling around the bend only to hear the dying soldier murmur his last screams.
In "Dead Man's Dump" death are the wheels of the truck that go crushing everything in its path. The main part of the poem that shows this is when the soldier is cries out to the living to come and save him. They dash off in search of the soldier only to make it just as he is slipping into death's hands. The last few lines of the poem read, "We heard his last sound, and our wheels grazed his dead face." Earlier in the poem the wheels had been crushing bones like they were death taking all of these lives.
When you read "Dead Man's Dump" and you visualize it, not just read it you see a battle field that is destroyed by war. Bodies lay everywhere. The way the author describes the gruesome detail of the dead troops, "A man's brains splattered on a stretcher-bearers face;" one can literally see the guts. Rosenberg uses spectacular imagery in that piece. The general picture that Rosenberg tries to get across to the reader is that of the bodies just lying around all over the ground. Carnage exists everywhere the reader can imagine.
In "Dead Man's Dump" the soldier at the end of the poem begs for the wagon to come pick him up, yet they get to him just as he takes his last breath.
Comments
These notes are aimed at A Level English students at A2 level.
Originally written by little one on TSR Forums.
