Hurt Locker

With the poem’s opening acknowledgement, “Nothing but hurt left here” (Line 1), Turner immediately drops readers into the hurt and trauma associated with war and remembrance, much in the same way that soldiers enter an unfamiliar place and bear witness to “bullets and pain” (Line 2). The speaker expands the war imagery to share a vivid, sensory experience by using coarse, vulgar language: “and all the fucks and goddamns / and Jesus Christs of the wounded” (Lines 4-5). The coarse language not only creates an auditory experience for readers, but it also infuses physical, emotional, and mental stress into the poem. Swearing is also a stereotypical association with combat and military life. By including the swear words, the speaker is not only underscoring the realities of war but also making the soldiers’ personality more tangible. The stanza concludes by repeating Line 1 with a slight twist: “Nothing left here but the hurt” (Line 6). The bookending line creates an echo and parallelism thematically and structurally.

The second stanza continues with the strong, violence-laden vocabulary but adds physicality. The speaker uses words like “see” (Line 7), “rolls” (Line 9), and “punches” (Line 10). These are action words, which make the “twelve-year-old” (Line 8) and the “sniper” (Line 10) present, tangible, and human. The physical descriptions continue as “four men / step from a taxicab in Mosul” (Lines 12-13) and “shower the street in brass” (Line 14). The speaker’s recall places the violence on the locals and distances the speaker’s own involvement in the event, though he will hint later at his own culpability in the poem’s closing line. Most noticeable in these lines is the speaker’s mention of a specific age: a “twelve-year-old” (Line 8). This description stands in contrast to the “four men” (Line 12) portrayed later in the poem. The focus on the boy’s age is significant because it reveals that the speaker recognizes that they fought against (and possibly killed) people of all ages.

The geography of Iraq is also crucial to the poem. Mosul is a city in northern Iraq. It is specifically located in the Nineveh Governorate, approximately 400 kilometers north of Baghdad on the Tigris River. It is Iraq’s second largest city after the capital of Baghdad and boasts an ethnically and religiously diverse population, including Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmen, and Sunni Muslims—the largest religious populations—though the city also has a significant Christian population. After US Special Forces airdropped into Mosul after strategic bombing, the city fell on 11 April 2003. Troops loyal to Saddam Hussein abandoned the city and surrendered two days later after the fall of Baghdad. In July 2003, both of Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed in Mosul. Between 2003 and 2008, many intellectuals, artists, writers, professors, and scientists fled Mosul, and in 2008, an exodus of Assyrian Christians occurred after a wave of murders threatened them. In 2014, the Islamic State took control of Mosul once again, leaving the city in complete governmental dysfunction.

As the poem concludes, the speaker references “the hurt locker” (Lines 15, 18) but never explains what the phrase actually means. One interpretation for this is that the speaker willfully places the responsibility of opening the locker onto the reader, thus requiring the reader to learn more by engaging with the poem. As a plea to the reader, the command begs for empathy. The statement—or command—to “Open the hurt locker” (Lines 15, 18) can also read like the speaker is commanding themself to find the strength to open the locker and begin healing.

The poem concludes with the line “how rough men come hunting for souls” (Line 18). The final line essentially asks the audience to understand how soldiers become killing machines. The speaker is also asking the audience to understand the emotional, physical, and mental agony soldiers and civilians endure during war.

Notably, the speaker uses the word “men” (Line 18) in the poem’s conclusion. Historically, war provided men with an opportunity, albeit a violent one, to express their masculinity. This was especially true in America during the World War II era, especially as men strove to develop key traits like courage, loyalty, stoicism, aggression, and competition. Society considered these traits “fighting virtues.” Nonetheless, the emotional, physical, and mental consequences of war challenged these virtues as more and more veterans returned home with mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder. During the post-World War II years, and especially during the Vietnam War era, this continued. By the time of the Iraq War, more and more women had joined the military, but the speaker does not frame the poem or the experience to include women. Instead, they frame the war experience as a males-only experience. The gendered nature of the poem reflects how, during the initial days of the Iraq War, the media controversially framed America and the Bush Administration as a masculine “cowboy” ready to defend the world and civilize the Middle East while depicting Europe as feminine, light-footed, and hesitant to become involved in the war.