“shrapnel smiles” is meant to represent the short-term and long-term effects of war on its soldiers and victims. The repeated phrase “they walk away as if they could” is a reference to PTSD and the way that fighting is trailed back on boots from the battlefields. It provides the commentary that war is unavoidable and ever-present, even though we strive for “peace” (as mentioned in the second stanza). Medical and technological advancements created for combat are also employed in daily life, which is why the fifth stanza alludes to lingering metal and twisted carcasses of planes, cars, etc. These mechanisms are referred to as gods because technology was seen to be the best of society even though it was used to do the worst things imaginable. As said by Henry Emerson Fosdick, “the tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do men’s worst.”

Bloody imagery is used to contrast a horrifying mood and apathetic tone, a juxtaposition that creates an ironic paradigm. This indifference towards human suffering, recognizing evil but not condemning it, is a tribute to the themes of standardized apathy towards death in Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (1924). The mood is hopeless, destroying the naïve belief that humanity is ultimately good, but it is not an atonement of sin. If anything, it urges that sin is what defines humanity, especially in an obliterated post-war world.

The format is loosely based off of the poem “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, which also features capitalized letters and fragmented sentences that spill between lines. The capitalization at the beginning of every line shows the need for the strict organization and standardization that soldiers were so used to at the time, but clauses are split between stanzas and there are no complete sentences like the disarray of a shell-shocked mind. The narrator is stumbling through, providing broken imagery and trying to make sense of this new world that appears so distorted to them and to all. The general pronoun “they” allows for ambiguous identities. Derealization, depersonalization, and a complete disconnect with the world are emphasized through both tone and mood.