Other People Chris Wallace-Crabbe

How does Chris Wallace-Crabbe communicate his frustration of the needlessness of war through
Other People?

Introduction
Chris Wallace-Crabbes poem Other People is an exploration of the unnecessarily destructive nature
of war. He questions who, or what was it that killed four of his uncles and what could have possible
brought them to commit such an atrocity.

Repetition
Throughout Other People, Chris Wallace-Crabbe utilises the poetic device of repetition. Though
never actually repeating the phrase Four uncles, it is paraphrased in every stanza except the final.
This repetition highlights the message that Wallace-Crabbe is trying to communicate: that the death
of four of his uncles is not normal, and it shouldnt be treated lightly.

Comparisons

Tone
The changing tone throughout the poem is a defining aspect of Other People. In the first stanza,
Wallace-Crabbe employs a neutral tone, as if the narrator was recounting an old memory. As he goes
on to explain in the second stanza, the tone grows darker. There is also a subtle tone of sarcasm
present throughout the poem. In referencing the war as a few bad years and as the luck of
history, and also comparing the deaths of his uncles as apples or dirt, Wallace-Crabbe instils a
sarcastic tone over the poem, possibly in order to impart his belief of the ridiculous nature of war,
and through that his hopelessness. This hopelessness is present throughout Other people, such as in
the phrases the war meant nothing at all and somebody must want to kill them. In fact, the
juxtaposition of these two phrases communicates the very hopelessness that Wallace-Crabbe feels
about war.