In the poem A Poetry Reading At West Point by William Matthews the author dehumanizes the soldiers in various ways. Although, William Matthews begins by dehumanizing the soldiers, he comes to recognize that like him they are human beings who have feelings. In the first stanza the poet uses military diction such as plebe, two batches, toting and the phrase bodies dressed a like to dehumanize the soldiers. Although the poet in the first two sentences of the stanza close mindedly judges the soldiers and thinks that they do not have feelings like him, he is unsure about his thoughts in the third sentence “What would my shrink say, if I had one, about such a dream if it were a dream”. (4-6) To him it feels like a dream speaking in front of soldiers