TPCASTT Poetry Analysis
Title & Author of the Poem: Infantry Assault by Doug Anderson
Title Before you even think about reading the poetry or
trying to analyze it, speculate on what you think the
poem might be about based upon the title. Often time
authors conceal meaning in the title and give clues in the
title. Jot down what you think this poem will be about…
Paraphrase Before you begin thinking about
meaning or tying to analyze the poem, don't overlook the
literal meaning of the poem. One of the biggest problems
that students often make in poetry analysis is jumping to
conclusions before understanding what is taking place in
the poem. When you paraphrase a poem, write in your
own words exactly what happens in the poem. Look at
the number of sentences in the poem—your paraphrase
should have exactly the same number. This technique is
especially helpful for poems written in the 17th and 19th
centuries. Sometimes your teacher may allow you to
summarize what happens in the poem. Make sure that
you understand the difference between a paraphrase and
a summary.
● The literal meaning of the words put together, a vicious attack against the supposed
enemy side of a soldier’s belief
● An attack of some sort that will involve murder and bloodshed, resulting in the
horror of the perceiver (Anderson)
● A failed attempt to be considered ‘manly’ or ‘strong’
● One of Anderson’s teammate shoots uncontrollably at a Vietnamese Cong soldier
during the Vietnam War so that he makes sure the body is just a body with no signs
of life whatsoever and has to concern over his life’s endangerment in the end.
● Anderson explicitly describes the gruesome process of skin ripping from the
soldier’s head as the gunshots repeatedly fire at his face in particular.
● The poem moves onto a brief stanza of piled corpses laying side by side one
another by a stream, a product of the attack that just occurred with Anderson’s
team.
● After residing in a nearby village for some time after the attack, the men light a fire
to it as they all sit in silence as to what they know they just ‘achieved’ with the
dead bodies drowning the stream with blood and having to rid of any sort of
evidence of their departure and their residence within the area.
● He concludes the poem with the delineation of a dragon lifting off into the heavens,
in reality, the smoke from the fire, and almost sees this as a sacrificing ceremony as
he notions once again of his awareness towards committed sins.
Craft This refers to any and all poetic devices,
focusing on how such devices contribute to the
meaning, the effect, or both of a poem. You may
consider imagery, figures of speech (simile, metaphor,
personification, symbolism, etc), denotation and
connotation, point of view, and sound devices
(alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and rhyme). It is
not necessary that you identify all the poetic devices
within the poem. The ones you do identify should be
seen as a way of supporting the conclusions you are
going to draw about the poem.
● Imagery: “the way the corpse’s face began to peel off like a mask because the skull
● Simile/metaphor: “the way the corpse’s face began to peel off like a mask,”
● Symbolism:
● Motif =
○ Red/blood: “the stream running red with all the bodies in it,” “there was no
place that was not red” (9-15) = the constant mentioning of the blood just
showcases how much blood was shed during the war, but, with the
incomplete number of mentionings, it can be assumed that even the author
does not know what to think as he almost gives a sense of irony to how little
he says ‘red’ or ‘blood,’ giving is a minuscule effect compared to the
symbols of corpses.
○ Corpses: “The way he made that corpse dance,” “the way the corpse’s face
began to peel off like a mask,” “but he couldn’t stop killing that corpse”
(1-5) = although he explicitly utilizes the symbols of corpses as a source of
utter death and reality behind the treacheries of war, the general notion of
death also follows as it adds onto a moral that war is just death and
completely dead in the eyes of daily living and appreciation. But while
daily life is the sweeter side of the spectrum, war is the coldest,
stone-ridden, hard object that does not crack open for anybody, and only
those who experience it get to see the tiniest peek of what it could be,
believing it to be the largest.
had been shattered, brains spilled out” (3-5) = again, with the theme of brutal death
and savagery.
“watching the ancestral serpent rise over the village in black coils,” (3-19) = the
idolized images of both America and Vietnam, a man sporting a mask in the midst
of the battlefield and a dragon soaring higher and freer than these men mentioned
within the poem.
○ Masks: “the way the corpse’s face began to peel off like a mask” (3-4) =
again, the idea of false masculinity and concurrent ‘masks’ that
men/soldiers must sport in order to survive the intolerant war that forces
them to do so in order to prove a wretched point of masculinity and fictional
strength and national pride
Attitude Having examined the poem's devices and
clues closely, you are now ready to explore the multiple
attitudes that may be present in the poem. Examination
of diction, images, and details suggests the speaker's
attitude and contributes to understanding. You may refer
to the list of words on Tone that will help you.
Remember that usually the tone or attitude cannot be
named with a single word Think complexity.
Shift Rarely does a poem begin and end the poetic
experience in the same place. As is true of most of us,
the poet's understanding of an experience is a gradual
realization, and the poem is a reflection of that
understanding or insight. Watch for the following keys
to shifts:
• key words, (but, yet, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons, ellipsis)
• stanza divisions
• changes in line or stanza length or both
• irony
• changes in sound that may indicate changes in meaning
• changes in diction
Title Revisited Now look at the title again, but this
time on an interpretive level. What new insight does the
title provide in understanding the poem.
● Tone words:
○ Aggrieved
○ Ambivalent
○ Complex
○ Depressing
○ Acerbic
○ Candid
○ Cautionary
○ Confused
○ Critical
○ Diplomatic
○ Thoughtful
● “the village burned,” (16) = So much has happened, and the author also makes that
very clear to us when he writes this entire poem based on the general idea of an
attack within combat means, but, this aspect of the poem almost to represent the
practice of letting something go or completely abandoning the memories of the past
as these soldiers, although these memories are going to haunt them for the rest of
their life, choose to unwillingly let go (at the poem’s current time period) of it, as
they begin to believe that the memories they make within the battlefield have no
purpose or benefit to themselves or their families back home.
● The complete memory of murder and vain death that lingers within the minds of
the soldiers, unable to contemplate or understand how they truly feel about their
role in life.
● Compared to the term, “Attack,” Anderson uses “Assault” as a way of relaying a
more violent, inconsiderate message to the reader and how their attacks on the
Vietnamese were not simple schemes of pride and power, they were murder
 weapons that were used to unjustly end the lives others for a war he does not care
too well for.

Theme What is the poem saying about the human
experience, motivation, or condition? What subject or
subjects does the poem address? What do you learn
about those subjects? What idea does the poet want you
to take away concerning these subjects? Remember that
the theme of any work of literature is stated in a
complete sentence and expresses a clear lesson for the
reader.
● One of the first soldiers mentioned shoots another Vietnamese soldier multiple
times to make sure he is truly dead before the American soldier can start moving
once again.
○ Although Anderson mentions blood and corpses many times in the poem,
possibly hinting at his pity and remorse, he does not speak up nor really
mentions ANYTHING to his fellow teammates and simply keeps his mouth
shut the entire time because he is aware that the others feel the same way.
○ There is no celebration, nor mourning happening with the death of the
Congs. There is no clarity, nor transparency as to how these men are
supposed to be seeing the situation. Even they do not know how to react.
● When riding on the back of a cart, every single soldier remains silent, despite the
fact that they had just burned down a harmless village and massacred numerous
Vietnamese soldiers that they left for dead nearby a stream.

Thesis Statement: By combining theme and craft,
please construct a formal thesis statement
Through imagery and repetition of vile, gruesome delineations of murder, Doug Anderson
demonstrates the mindless and truly disconnected perceptions of virtue and rationality
within soldiers as their obsession with survival and the incessant fear of death overpowers
their free will as a natural being to think and perform clearly.

How to write a THESIS STATEMENT for POETRY: Provided by Mrs. Blevins :)

EXAMPLE of a THESIS STATEMENT you will be required to master next year:

In William Shakespeare’s provocative, heartbreaking tragedy, Othello, he utilizes/uses/illustrates/demonstrates/shows/depicts both

common animal imagery and clipped, lewd language to illustrate that even the most noble and valiant of individuals can devolve and
mutate into beastial human beings and inelegant, base speakers.

Green illustrates my voice/opinion words;

Blue shows my two salient features;
Yellow indicates my theme statement.