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The Wound-Dresser Themes
"The Wound Dresser " was inspired by Walt Whitman's voluntary service in the hospitals of the Civil War. He visited with the wounded and dying, often writing letters for them to send to their families and loved ones or reciting passages from the Bible or Shakespeare for them, to try to raise their spirits.
The speaker in the poem is likewise a presence in the war's hospitals, but as a "wound-dresser" he is more physically and intimately involved in the treatment of the soldiers' wounds. Among the themes that emerge from the poem is the pathos of their suffering, and more largely, the agony of soldiers of all wars. The focus in the poem is not on the heroism of battlefield exploits, but on the humble suffering of the men who have been devastated physically, psychologically, and spiritually. The speaker observes a grievously wounded soldier:
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,And has not yet look’d on it.
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.
...turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you,Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.
I examine,Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard...
Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.
Themes and Meanings
(Critical Guide to Poetry for Students)
As a tale told to the young, the poet’s memories act as an offering of wisdom and future direction for healing the nation: not to remember the glory of battles won, but to remember the pain that soldiers on both sides suffered, their sacrificial deaths, and the war wounds that need loving healing. The nation’s people should not pass by the wounded because they are too difficult to look at; instead they are to become wound-dressers, whose function is a holy one. A few but clear allusions are made to the divine nature of the soldiers as Christ-like: the soldiers’ “priceless blood,” the poet dressing “a wound in the side, deep, deep,” the dying arms “cross’d” on the wound-dresser’s neck. The soldiers are sacrificial soldiers like the dying Christ, the suffering servant, except that they have died to preserve the unity of the nation. The wound-dresser is also a servant, the one who attends faithfully and humbly to the greater suffering of the soldiers. The wound-dresser’s love goes as deep as that of the soldiers’ love for country, for he desires to die in a boy’s stead. The image of the dying soldiers with their arms crossed on the nurse’s neck and kissing, which closes the poem, is fully earned through the nurse’s deep compassion and humble service.
“The Wound-Dresser” occupies a central place in the “Drum-Taps”...
(The entire section is 938 words.)