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War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy (1985) - Coggle Diagram

- - - - “The only light is red and softly glows” refers to the red light present in the tabernacle to indicate that Jesus is always present. The red light in the tabernacle also symbolises the continuously burning fire on the altar of burnt offerings in front of the temple. This could be conveying that since Jesus was the offering for people’s wish to be saved, the people who died are his offerings in exchange for prize-winning and impactful photos. He thrives on their suffering.
      - "as though this were a church"
        A "church" is where people go to get atoned for their sins; although many people commonly simply go to church to receive the Eucharist regularly, some people choose to go there at their worst times (Christians and non-Christians alike) in order to ask God for help or guidance. At church, they look for God during an encounter with adversity. By the photographer persona comparing the image subjects to churchgoers, he is conveying that they are in times of desperation and great need for help. It could also be to the extremity that they are looking for the photographer to tell them that everything will be okay (just as people want God to assure them that they will get through an adversity) as they cross to the other side (dying) because the photographer is the last thing/person that the attacked civilians see. Even when people do not go to church out of desperation, they commonly go to receive the Eucharist, which is salvation. Nonetheless, this salvation can also be viewed as the image subjects looking at the photographer as their hope. It could simply be that they are looking for someone to comfort them as they die, or they are hoping that their population/kind/family/friends will be saved because of the photographer's sacrificial work of exposing the truth with the risk of death. In conclusion, the victims are metaphorised as the churchgoers and the photographer is metaphorised as the salvation/hope/guidance that is found in church.
      - "a priest preparing to intone a mass"
        "Intone" has a negative connotation which suggests that if he were to perform a mass, it would be dull because there is little change in the pitch of the voice. This conveys that although people may find hope in him, it is not something that he feels exceedingly excited about. Instead, as people typically do when they are sad, he speaks monotonously because there is little point in trying to sound and pretend to be happy. This conveys that he is open about feeling distressed about the things he sees and the feeling that people rely on HIM to get the truth out. It is a big responsibility that can sometimes make him feel stressed and overwhelmed to the point at which he becomes sad because perhaps his work is not enough (going from one place to another) to make the atrocity stop. He may also be sad about being the last person that people see because he does not like watching people die. It may be that he does not feel like they deserved to die at that time or that he feels like they deserved to see someone else other than him before dying.
      - "Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass."
        "All flesh is grass" is a literal reference to the way in which war kills people in extensive amounts. There are sometimes no opportunities/time/resources to be able to bury each person into a coffin, so sometimes people resort to mass gravesn on fields. Eventually, the bodies decay, and the grass receives its nutrients from the decaying bodies, making the grass made out of flesh in the sense that it derives its nutrients from it. Figuratively, "all flesh is grass" conveys the way in which he has witnessed an extensive amount of people die onto the fields to the point at which he perceives the grass and flesh to be synonymous, because a lot of people he has seen eventually becomes grass (decaying in grass from death by war). Flesh is not literally grass, but he perceives it this way because the dead bodies eventually decay and become consumed by grass.
      - "All flesh is grass" is from Isaiah 40:6-8. It is meant to convey that human life is temporary. It was written by people who lived in Mediterranean climate, where grass does not live for too long; it quickly dies from the sun's heat. Using this as an allusion conveys that the photographer has succumbed to the belief that life is short and people are expected to die at a young age because he has seen a lot of people die early from man-made causes, not natural age/disease. He has just accepted the fact that people kill each other or that people die early; he is not fazed anymore.
    - - Rhyme
      - Assonance
      - Sentence length
        
        "Belfast. Beirut. Pnom Penh."
        The use of minor sentence with only nouns of places known to have war creates a fast rhythm because one place is named after another. It mimics the way in which he goes from one war zone to the next to search for his next thrill, and it also conveys the way in which war never ends because it immediately occurs in one place after another. Aditionally, naming places with only two syllables emphasise how they are all the same- places of war. It disregards the individuality of the countries and diminishes it to the only thing that the photographer recognises it for: places of war. To him, they are not places of vacation or cultural significance or other such enjoyable or culturally-rich places; they are simply places of suffering, as that was all he saw: suffering. Just as he finishes in one place, another war starts and he does not want to be behind on the action.
    - - Visual
        
        Colour
        
        "The only light is red and softly glows"
        The red light, which is prevalent in a dark room, could be a symbolism of the blood surrounding him. It is a symbol for the suffering which constantly surrounds him even when he has left the battlefield, because blood is red. The adjective "softly" is used to describe things that are faintly present. This conveys that the suffering surrounding him, never leaving, is always subtly present. He always finds suffering in everything. He becomes triggered by even the smallest things, remembering the war scenes all over again.
    - - Sibilance
        
        “With spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”
        
        “Spools of suffering” is sibilance, creating a harsh sound that conveys the harshness of the moments captured in the images
      - Plosive
        
        "Belfast. Beirut. Pnom Penh."
        The use of the plosive consonants "p" and "b" convey the harshness of the places that he mentioned, because they are places known to have had war. It is likely that they are places where he took photographs.
        
        Onomatopoeia
        
        "Solutions slop in trays" is a sibilance that mimics the sound of solutions slopping in trays because the "s" sound is similar to the sound made by the literal event. This helps the readers to understand and emphaises the monotonous nature of the job because it helps them to auditorily imagine the event occurring.
      - Fricative
      - Liquid consonance
      - Gliding consonance