Caitlyn King - The Unraveling of Boots

 In 1903, Rudyard Kipling published the poem "Boots" which is meant to represent the repetitive thoughts of an infantryman marching in South Africa during the Second Boer War.

It's a simple poem, with a cadence similar to a marching rhythm. The repetition shows the soldiers' mental deterioration with the endless marching of boots.  The speaker, Taylor Holmes, reads aloud the poem with increasing intensity; calm and monotone, then angry, distressed, then almost mad in a hysterical way. His recording has been used to prepare soldiers for psychological torture in SERE schools, listening to the recording on loop for hours.

Over and over, the poem despairs that there is no discharge in the war, that it is perpetual and soldiers never leave unscarred, forming triggers and having their minds irreversibly changed. It also references how in times of war, there is no way of getting discharged. Like the poem says, they are going lunatic.

He has nothing to do but watch his boots go up and down, struggling to maintain his sanity.

Now, the most popular recording of the poem has slowed down. The soldier has gotten tired, he's more sluggish, walking through the poem just because that's all he knows to do. Kipling focused on how the mundane repetition destroys the mind more than starvation or the cold.

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