The Charge of the Bread Brigade
The Charge of the Bread Brigade - meaning Summary
Satire of Mass Complacency
Pound’s poem parodies martial rhetoric to mock a passive, hungry populace and the elites who manipulate them. Its voice ridicules mass complacency, turning a grand charge into a shabby procession of “slouching” and “mouching.” The poem targets propaganda and social inequality, portraying crowds as duped and demeaned while powerful figures feed them comforting lies. The effect is satirical, corrosive, and deliberately unheroic.
Read Complete AnalysesHalf a loaf, half a loaf, Half a loaf? Urn-hum? Down through the vale of gloom Slouched the ten million, Onward th' 'ungry blokes, Crackin' their smutty jokes! We'll send 'em mouchin' 'ome, Damn the ten million! There goes the night brigade, They got no steady trade, Several old so'jers know Monty has blunder'd. Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to buy the pie, Slouching and mouching, Lousy ten million! Plenty to right of 'em, Plenty to left of 'em, Yes, wot is left of 'em, Damn the ten million. Stormed at by press and all, How shall we dress 'em all? Glooming and mouching! See 'em go slouching there, With cowed and crouching air Dundering dullards! How the whole nation shook While Milord Beaverbrook Fed 'em with hogwash!
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