Key Quote
“"My son would often feel sharp wounds again"”
Vernon Scannell · Nettles
Focus: “sharp wounds”
The final line's devastating admission that the father cannot protect his son forever transforms a simple domestic incident into a universal statement about the futility of parental protection.
Technique 1 — EXTENDED MILITARY METAPHOR
Scannell sustains an extended metaphor throughout the poem, describing the nettles as an enemy army: they form a 'regiment', stand in a 'fierce parade', and are 'fallen dead' when cut down. This militaristic language transforms a garden into a battlefield, revealing how the speaker — a former soldier — perceives threats through the lens of his war experience. The metaphor is never broken, creating a seamless conflation (merging) of the domestic and the military that suggests the father cannot separate the two.
The military metaphor also foreshadows the poem's central futility. In war, the enemy regroups after every attack — and so do the nettles: 'the tall recruits' return within two weeks. Scannell uses the metaphor to suggest that a parent's battle to protect their child is as unwinnable as any military campaign. The word 'recruits' is particularly powerful — it implies the nettles multiply, just as new soldiers replace the fallen. The father's 'fury' (his emotional weapon) is as inadequate against recurring pain as a sword against an infinite army.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
The poem enacts a devastating stagnation: the father attacks the nettles, burns them, and believes he has won — but within two weeks, 'tall recruits' have grown back. The cycle of threat, response, and renewed threat is perpetual (never-ending), and the final line confirms that no amount of parental action can prevent future pain. Scannell suggests that the desire to protect one's child is an instinct that can never be fully satisfied — the world will always contain 'sharp wounds', and the father's battle is one he can never conclusively win.
Key Words
Technique 2 — RHYMING COUPLETS AND CONTROLLED FORM
The poem is written as a single sixteen-line stanza in iambic pentameter with strict AABB rhyming couplets. This tightly controlled form reflects the father's desperate desire to impose order on a threatening world — each couplet 'closes' neatly, just as the father tries to close off danger from his son. The regularity creates a sense of composure that contrasts with the violence of the content (slashing nettles with a billhook, burning them).
However, the rigid form ultimately becomes ironic. The neat couplets suggest resolution and control, but the poem's message is that control is an illusion — the nettles return despite the father's best efforts. The final couplet ('My son would often feel sharp wounds again') rhymes perfectly but delivers the poem's most painful admission: the father's structured, methodical response has achieved nothing. Scannell uses the tension between ordered form and chaotic content to embody the gap between a parent's desire to protect and the world's refusal to cooperate.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
SCANNELL'S WAR EXPERIENCE
Vernon Scannell served in World War II and deserted twice, experiences that left him with lasting psychological trauma. His use of military metaphor in a domestic poem reveals how war reshapes perception — a father who has been a soldier cannot see even garden nettles without the lens of combat. The poem implicitly asks whether a war veteran can ever fully return to civilian life, or whether hypervigilance (excessive alertness to threats) permanently alters how they see the world.
POST-WAR FATHERHOOD
Written in the post-war period, the poem reflects a generation of fathers who had witnessed extreme violence and now faced the challenge of raising children in peacetime. Scannell's speaker channels his protective instinct through the only framework he knows — military action. The poem suggests that parental love, when filtered through trauma, can become a form of compulsive behaviour: the father cannot simply comfort his son but must wage war on the source of pain.
Key Words
WOW — FREUDIAN REPETITION COMPULSION — RELIVING WAR THROUGH DOMESTIC LIFE
Freud's concept of repetition compulsion describes the unconscious tendency to repeat traumatic experiences in new contexts. Scannell's speaker does exactly this: unable to process his war trauma directly, he re-enacts it in the garden, transforming nettles into enemy soldiers and his billhook into a weapon. The 'fury' he feels is disproportionate to a child's nettle sting — it belongs to the battlefield, not the garden. This suggests the father is not really fighting nettles but fighting his own traumatic memories, projected onto the domestic world. The poem thus becomes a study in how unresolved trauma distorts everyday experience, turning a loving father into a man who can only express care through violence. The nettles' return mirrors trauma's return — both are inexorable (impossible to prevent), ensuring the cycle of pain and response continues indefinitely.
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