"The Target" Ivor Gurney Essay Analysis

What an incredible poem - effective, engaging, heart-breaking.

Included are TWO VERSIONS of a GCSE level Essay Analysis of the poem, analysed using an easy scaffold of ‘SPECS SLIM’. One more in depth version, and one ‘easier’.

Useful for Students - give them hints/paragraph sample/discussion points and allow them to complete each section.

Useful for Teachers as a sample piece of work.

The question:

Write about the poem ‘The Target’.

You should describe what the poet writes about and how he uses language to convey his thoughts and feelings.

The scaffold:
SPECS
Subject Purpose Emotion Craftsmanship Summary

Craftmanship: SLIM
Structure Language Imagery Movement Sounds

Example paragraph:

Subject
The title of the poem gives the first suggestion of its subject matter. A ‘target’ is something that is aimed for – whether as an aspirational goal, or through violence – in archery, or the use of guns. It is quickly realised that the latter is involved in this ‘Target’ – and the aim was a fellow human being. The antiquated language, e.g. ‘durst’, ‘Twas’, ‘a-happening’, places this situation in the past, possibly World War One. If this is the case, the subject matter is the death of a soldier, at the hand of his enemy; the enemy and killer being the first person narrator of the poem. The poem moves on to document the killer’s reasons, his regrets, the fears of his mother and the only solution possible to quell her fears: “Perhaps it might be best/To die, and set her fears at rest”; the lack of participation from a God who ‘takes no sort of heed’ and the inescapable ‘bloody mess’ of war and ‘job’ which must be carried out by the narrator as a soldier.