Question

Characters of small pain in my chest by Michael Mack

Answer 1

‘Small Pain in My Chest’ by the American poet Michael Mack is a remarkable poem about a soldier’s death and the narrator’s feeling at his death. The title is an ironical one. The soldier repeatedly says that he has a small pain in his chest. But he finally died of his injury that he received at the battle. This poem reveals the anti-war attitude of the poet Michael Mack.

The poem ‘Small Pain in My Chest’ is written in very simple language. It consists of nine stanzas of four lines each. It follows a regular rhyme scheme. The first two and the last two lines of each stanza rhyme. The lines of the poem are rather longer. Apart from the first stanza, the last two lines of each stanza have the same rhyme pattern, and all the eight stanzas end with the phrase ‘small pain in my chest’ with a couple of slight variations.