In Mametz Wood, how do the stanzas progress in focus?

• A. The stanzas focus on the land, bones and people in that order, with stanza 7 as a conclusion
• B. The stanzas alternate between focus on the land, bones and people, with stanza 7 acting as a conclusion
• C. The poem concentrates only on the land
• D. The poem cycles through the dead repeatedly with no concluding stanza

Answer: (B)

The idea being tested is how the poem moves its focus across the stanzas. Mametz Wood shifts attention in a pattern that cycles through three linked ideas: the land itself, the bones of the dead, and the people (memory or those who remember them). Each stanza nudges the reader from landscape imagery to the reality of the soldiers’ bodies, then to the living memory and meaning of those men, and then back to the land with that memory in mind. This alternating progression isn’t endless repetition; the final stanza serves as a conclusion, tying together land, loss, and memory. That pattern fits the option describing an alternation among land, bones, and people with a concluding seventh stanza.