Many soldiers understand that their particular occupation means that a time could come when they would have to give up their life for their country. The thoughts of one particular soldier are provided in the poem, "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed. As the instructor lectures his soldiers about the different parts of a weapon -- a tool of war created to cause death, the listening soldier envisions elements of nature that are life giving. Reed uses structure, connotation, and imagery to compare the parts of a weapon with elements of nature in order to show how one particular soldier thinks about life and living things when confronted with the thought of his own mortality.
             The title, "Naming of Parts", has special significance in that the parts of a weapon are not entirely what the poem is about. Although the instructor tells the students they will be learning the names of different parts of their rifle, the soldier is half-heartedly listening as he daydreams about "Japonica/[which] Glistens like coral (4,5). The flower's name has a very musical sound to it, the assonance of each syllable is soft and offers a very feminine connotation. Because Japonica have red petals, and because they are shimmering like coral, it implies that the young man is actually thinking of a woman's full lips. Since the flower is cultivated in Japan, he could be fantasizing about a Japanese woman, which is supported in line 28 when he mentions the "almond-blossom", the "almond" being the shape of the woman's eyes. Additionally, the soldier says that the flowers shine "in all the neighboring gardens" (5), which further supports the idea that he is thinking of a woman, since women do not receive military training in the same area as men.
             A woman's image comes immediately to mind in the second stanza, combined with the idea that not only is the young recruit untrained as a soldier...