The Last Laugh | ISC Class 11 Elective English Notes

This note covers Wilfred Owen and The Last Laugh, the three soldiers’ final utterances, stanza-by-stanza summary, the title, poetic structure, sound and imagery, themes, key quotations, difficult vocabulary, and questions with model answers.

Who wrote the poem, and what kind of experience does it present?

About the author and the text

Wilfred Owen lived from 1893 to 1918. A British poet who served as a soldier in the First World War, he was killed in action in November 1918. His experience of warfare provides relevant background to a poem centred on soldiers facing death.

The Last Laugh presents three unnamed soldiers through their final words and bodily responses. Around them, weapons acquire voices, expressions and gestures. The result is a concentrated picture of human suffering surrounded by apparently mocking instruments of destruction.

A speaker is the voice presenting a poem. Here, a reporting voice describes the soldiers and the weapons. That voice must be distinguished from the individual soldiers’ speech. The poem does not name its observer or identify a particular battle.

How should its viewpoint be understood?

The poem can be read as anti-war poetry, poetry that exposes or challenges the suffering and values associated with warfare. This reading follows from the contrast between vulnerable human beings and the weapons that seem to enjoy their helplessness.

Its subject is intimate as well as violent. The men turn towards religious language, parents and love. Their words make them recognisable as people with attachments, even though Owen supplies no names, ranks or personal histories.

The poet’s military experience does not make every detail an autobiographical report. The three scenes are arranged as a literary sequence. Their meaning depends on what the poem presents: brief human appeals followed by a much more sustained response from the weapons.

What happens in the poem’s stanza-by-stanza summary?

A stanza is a group of verse lines forming a unit within a poem. The Last Laugh has three stanzas of five lines each. Each introduces a different soldier, then turns towards the surrounding instruments of war.

Stanza one: a cry and an uncertain meaning

The first soldier cries out using the name of Jesus Christ, says that he has been hit, and dies. The reporting voice leaves open whether his words were a vain curse or an actual prayer. The uncertainty is part of the account.

Bullets then seem to chirp a repeated declaration of uselessness. Machine-guns appear to chuckle in disapproval, and a large gun laughs loudly. These imagined responses make the weapons sound as though they are commenting on the soldier’s death.

The sequence does not give the man a speech explaining his beliefs. Instead, it records an abrupt cry and then turns away from him. The weapons occupy the remainder of the stanza, making their activity seem to outlast his voice.

Stanza two: a return to parental attachment

The next soldier sighs for his mother and father. He then smiles at nothing, childlike and dead. The description joins an expression associated with affection to the finality of death, creating a disturbing contrast between appearance and condition.

A high shrapnel-cloud, a cloud associated with an exploding shell and its deadly contents, makes a leisurely, contemptuous gesture. A shell is an explosive projectile. The splinters, small fragments, spit and laugh in a small, mocking way. Their response offers no comfort to the soldier’s appeal towards his parents.

The family members are present in his speech, not as characters shown beside him. The scene therefore depends on the gap between the emotional closeness of those relationships and the hostile surroundings in which his words are spoken.

Stanza three: love brought down into mud

The third soldier moans for his love. His mood seemed languid with love: the description presents an appearance, not certain knowledge of his inner state. As his face is slowly lowered, it comes into contact with the mud in a terrible imitation of a kiss.

Bayonets, blades fitted to rifles, appear to grin with long teeth. Shells behave like a noisy disorderly crowd, while gas hisses. The final response belongs to the weapons and gas rather than to the man who has called for love.

What connects the three scenes?

The human appeals differ, but the arrangement repeatedly denies them an answering human voice. Each scene moves from a personal attachment towards destructive material surroundings. This repetition suggests that the suffering is not confined to one isolated encounter.

The summary must keep observation and interpretation separate. The first soldier’s intention remains uncertain; the second is described as childlike, not identified as a child; and the third seems absorbed in love before the physical movement into mud changes the scene.

How does the first stanza preserve uncertainty while making the weapons sound confident?

The soldier’s words and the speaker’s limits

Ambiguity means that wording allows more than one possible meaning. The first soldier’s religious cry is ambiguous because the reporting voice explicitly considers two possibilities: cursing vainly and praying indeed. Neither possibility is selected as the definite explanation.

This matters because the emotional meaning would differ. A curse might express shock, pain or protest; a prayer might seek help. These are possible readings of the alternatives, not additional facts about the soldier’s beliefs or intentions.

The soldier’s report that he has been hit is followed immediately by his death. There is no prolonged account of his wound. The compressed movement gives little space between his recognition of injury and the ending of his life.

The weapons’ apparent reply

The bullets’ repeated assertion of futility contrasts with the observer’s uncertainty. Futility means ineffectiveness or failure to achieve a purpose. The imagined bullets behave as though the cry has already been judged useless, whatever the man intended by it.

Machine-guns add a small, dismissive chuckle, while the large gun produces a much broader laugh. The changes in sound give the weapons distinct presences. Their responses can be heard as an increasingly forceful display of contempt.

The effect is cruel because sounds associated with amusement surround a death. A human cry demands attention, but the response comes from objects that cannot offer sympathy. Owen makes their noise resemble an answer without making it a genuinely compassionate exchange.

What conclusion is justified?

The scene supports a reading of warfare as indifferent to human need. It does not settle a religious argument about whether God exists or whether every prayer is useless. The declaration of uselessness belongs to the imagined bullets’ response.

Keeping this distinction protects the poem’s uncertainty. The observer leaves the man’s intention open; the weapons seem brutally certain. Their certainty exposes their imagined cruelty rather than providing an authoritative explanation of the soldier’s faith.

How do the second and third stanzas transform family feeling and love?

The second soldier’s childlike expression

The second soldier’s appeal towards both parents gives his death a familial setting within his speech. Childlike describes the quality of his smile. It suggests vulnerability and dependence without establishing that he is literally a child.

His smile is directed at nothing. This prevents a straightforward reading of the expression as a happy response to something present. The accompanying statement that he is dead makes the smile troubling rather than reassuring.

The lofty cloud is described as leisurely. Lofty means high or elevated, while leisurely means unhurried. In this context, height and apparent ease can suggest a position of contemptuous superiority over the helpless man below.

The splinters’ spitting and small laughter extend that contempt. Their imagined behaviour changes dangerous material into a group of jeering presences. The soldier’s relationship with his parents has no corresponding tenderness in the surrounding scene.

The third soldier’s apparent mood

Love-languid suggests weakness or a dreamy lack of energy associated with love. The word seemed must remain attached to this description: the observer reports how the soldier appears, without claiming certain access to his feelings.

The movement of his whole face into mud gives the language of affection a violent setting. A kiss normally implies contact with a beloved person, but here the contact is with the ground. This can be read as love’s physical degradation by warfare.

The text describes the face as slowly lowered. It does not identify a person who lowers it. Adding comrades, a burial party or a particular physical cause would turn an unspecified movement into an invented event.

Two expressions, two painful contrasts

The smile and the kiss are bodily actions associated with affection. Owen places both beside death or its immediate threat. Their emotional associations remain recognisable, which makes their transformation more disturbing.

These scenes create pathos, an effect that awakens pity or sorrow. The men’s appeals reveal attachments beyond the battlefield, while their bodies remain exposed to its violence. The weapons answer those attachments through ridicule, threatening expressions and hostile sounds.

How do structure, rhyme and rhythm organise the poem?

A repeated balance between men and weapons

The fifteen lines form three five-line stanzas. In each stanza, the first two lines concern a soldier, while the last three concentrate on weapons or destructive battlefield material. This repeated arrangement is one of the poem’s clearest organising features.

Structural parallelism means repeating a pattern of arrangement. Here, each human appeal receives a corresponding passage of imagined mechanical response. The pattern makes the scenes comparable while allowing the kinds of appeal and weapon sound to change.

The distribution of lines also affects emphasis. The soldier speaks briefly, but the stanza continues after his utterance. The weapons repeatedly have the closing position. This gives formal support to the title’s suggestion of a final, cruel triumph.

What is the rhyme scheme?

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of corresponding sounds at line endings. The poem does not sustain a regular pattern of full end-rhyme across all five lines of each stanza. Its most noticeable recurring correspondences occur in the opening pairs.

The pairs are died / indeed, Dad / dead and mood / mud. Each pair has related consonant sounds but different stressed vowel sounds, the vowel sounds in the strongly emphasised syllables. They can therefore be discussed as near rhymes rather than as exact rhymes.

Pararhyme is a kind of near rhyme in which the consonant framework corresponds while the vowels differ. These opening pairs illustrate that effect. Their resemblance binds the lines together, while their lack of full agreement can contribute to unease.

It is more precise to describe the actual pattern than to impose a conventional scheme of matching letters for full rhyme. The remaining endings do not establish a repeated full-rhyme arrangement shared by all three stanzas.

How does the rhythm change?

Rhythm is the movement created by stress, pace and phrasing. The longer opening lines carry the human scenes; the later lines break into distinct weapon sounds and gestures. The brief final gas sound gives the ending particular abruptness.

Repeated conjunctions also matter. Several weapon descriptions begin with And, adding one hostile presence after another. The accumulation can make the violence seem to continue beyond each individual man’s ability to speak.

Which poetic devices turn battlefield objects into mocking presences?

Personification and the attribution of feeling

Personification gives human behaviour or qualities to something non-human. It is central to the poem: machine-guns chuckle in line 4, the large gun laughs in line 5, and the shrapnel-cloud makes a gesture across lines 8 and 9.

The same device continues through the splinters’ laughter in line 10 and the bayonets’ grin in line 13. The weapons become apparent participants in a cruel exchange. Their assigned actions make them seem pleased by human helplessness.

Personification does not mean that weapons literally possess minds. The interpretation depends on the difference between their material nature and their imagined conduct. That difference allows Owen to present mechanical destruction as a grotesque imitation of social behaviour.

Sound imagery and onomatopoeia

Imagery is language that evokes sensory experience. Auditory imagery appeals to hearing. The poem’s chirping, chuckling, loud laughter, spitting, hooting, groaning and hissing create a varied field of sounds around the men.

Onomatopoeia uses words whose sounds suggest the noises they describe. The machine-guns’ repeated tutting in line 4 imitates a short repeated sound while suggesting disapproval. The gas’s hissing in line 15 also connects spoken sound with its described effect.

The noises differ in emotional association. A chuckle suggests contained amusement; a guffaw is loud laughter; to titter is to laugh in a small, often unkind way. These distinctions make the weapons’ imagined mockery more varied.

Visual imagery and metaphor

Visual imagery appeals to sight. The dead soldier’s childlike smile in line 7, the face contacting mud in line 12 and the bayonets’ grin in line 13 give visible forms to vulnerability and threat.

A metaphor describes something through an implied comparison. The bayonets’ teeth in line 13 turn blades into a threatening mouth. Their grin combines this metaphor with personification, making an instrument of injury seem capable of malicious enjoyment.

The shells in line 14 are presented as rabbles, disorderly crowds. The comparison transforms scattered destructive objects into a noisy, hostile gathering. Together with the mouth-like bayonets, this creates an environment that seems actively antagonistic.

Repetition and alliteration

Repetition is the recurrence of a word, sound or pattern. The bullets’ repeated declaration in line 3 presses home their supposed judgement. The repeated reference to the mother in line 6 gives the human appeal an urgent, intimate insistence.

Alliteration repeats consonant sounds at the beginnings of nearby words. The repeated initial sound in the description of splinters spitting in line 10 sharpens the sound of the weapon response. The repeated initial sound in love-languid in line 11 links the description to the appeal.

These devices work together. Sound suggests the weapons’ noise; personification gives that noise an attitude; imagery sets human bodies beside destructive objects. Naming a device becomes useful when its contribution to that contrast is explained.

What themes and message emerge from the three deaths?

Human vulnerability before destructive power

A theme is a significant idea developed through a text. One central theme here is the vulnerability of human life. Each man is presented through a brief utterance and a bodily condition rather than through military achievement.

The instruments surrounding the men seem more energetic than their victims. Weapons laugh, gesture and make themselves heard while the soldiers lose the ability to respond. This reversal can be read as a picture of human beings overwhelmed by the means of warfare.

Attachment survives in the soldiers’ words

The three appeals turn towards religious language, family and love. Their differences matter: the first remains uncertain between curse and prayer, the second names parents, and the third addresses a beloved. They should not be flattened into identical acts of prayer.

What connects them is their human significance. The words point beyond the immediate machinery of battle towards personal feeling and relationship. They give the men emotional identities without requiring invented biographies or imagined conversations with absent people.

The cruelty of mockery beside suffering

Mockery is ridicule directed at another person or thing. The imagined weapon responses are disturbing because amusement appears beside suffering. The title’s laughter is therefore bitter: it does not offer relief, friendship or shared pleasure.

The high cloud’s contemptuous gesture and the grinning blades give ridicule a visible form. The varied noises give it an audible form. Together, they make the battlefield seem incapable of recognising the value of the lives being lost.

The destruction of consoling appearances

A smile might ordinarily suggest happiness; a kiss might suggest affection. In the poem, these familiar appearances fail to provide comfort. The smile accompanies death, and the kiss becomes contact between a face and mud.

This theme does not require the claim that love itself is worthless. The appeals retain their emotional force. The horror lies in the violent setting that frustrates or deforms their expression, making tenderness coexist with physical helplessness.

What is the poem’s message?

The poem can be read as a rejection of warfare’s supposed grandeur. Its emphasis falls on fragile lives and cruelly animated instruments rather than on victory, honour or heroic reward. That reading is grounded in the repeated contrast between appeals and mockery.

The message emerges through scenes rather than through a concluding moral statement. The ending leaves the gas sounding after the human voice. Readers are invited to feel the absence of consolation instead of receiving a speech that explains away the losses.

Why is the title ironic, and which key quotations illuminate it?

Who seems to have the final response?

Irony involves a significant contrast between expectation and reality or between apparent and implied meaning. To have the last laugh ordinarily suggests eventual triumph. Here, that apparent triumph belongs to destructive things that mock dying human beings.

The title is therefore bitter rather than celebratory. The reader is not invited to enjoy the soldiers’ defeat. The weapons’ apparent pleasure makes the situation more horrifying and helps direct sympathy towards the men.

Short quotations in context

“Whether”

Reporting speaker, line 2: introduces uncertainty about the first soldier’s intention.

This small word controls interpretation. A reading that confidently identifies the cry as prayer or a curse removes a distinction the reporting voice deliberately preserves.

“In vain, vain, vain!”

Personified bullets, line 3: their imagined reply follows the first soldier’s death.

The repetition makes the imagined response sound insistently dismissive. It belongs to the bullets’ mockery, not to a balanced explanation of religious belief.

“childlike, being dead”

Reporting speaker, line 7: describes the second soldier after his appeal to his parents.

The close placement of childlike appearance and death makes the smile painful. The phrase supports an interpretation of vulnerability, without supplying an age.

“seemed his mood”

Reporting speaker, line 11: qualifies the description of the third soldier’s apparent absorption in love.

The qualification limits the observer’s claim. The scene moves from an appearance associated with love towards the physical reality of the face entering mud.

“And the Gas hissed.”

Reporting speaker, line 15: gives the poem’s final sound to gas.

The last response is a hiss, not literal laughter. The title gathers the larger pattern of jeering and hostile animation into one bitter idea of triumph. Its meaning therefore extends beyond the exact sound of the final line.

How can a close-reading answer connect evidence, technique and meaning?

Begin with the precise detail

Close reading means examining particular words and patterns to explain how a text creates meaning. A useful answer begins with what is actually present: a spoken appeal, a qualifying word, an image, a sound or a repeated arrangement.

For the first stanza, the crucial evidence is the unresolved choice between curse and prayer. An answer should preserve that choice before explaining how the weapons’ dismissive response contrasts with it. The order prevents interpretation from replacing the detail being interpreted.

Explain the connection

For the bayonets, identify the blades’ comparison to teeth and their imagined grin. Then explain how a weapon becomes a threatening mouth. Finally connect that transformation to the broader contrast between human vulnerability and the battlefield’s apparent malice.

For structure, identify the two-line human scene followed by the three-line weapon response. Explain that the weapons repeatedly close the stanza. Connect this recurring position to the title’s suggestion that destructive forces seem to have the final response.

Keep claims within the evidence

A strong interpretation need not supply missing causes or histories. The smile does not establish the second man’s happiness; the third man’s lowered face does not establish who moved it. The poem’s emotional force remains powerful without those additions.

The same discipline applies to tone, the attitude conveyed by the writing. The weapons seem mocking, while the whole poem can evoke pity and horror. Distinguishing those levels avoids attributing the weapons’ cruelty directly to the poet.

Glossary

• Vainly — Without achieving the intended purpose; here, one possible description of the first soldier’s curse.
• Indeed — Truly or actually; here, it qualifies the possibility that the first soldier really prayed.
• Chirped — Made a short, sharp sound; the bullets receive this sound in their imagined response.
• Chuckled — Laughed quietly or in a contained way, suggesting the machine-guns’ imagined amusement at suffering.
• Guffawed — Laughed loudly and openly; the large gun receives this forceful expression of amusement.
• Lofty — High or elevated; the shrapnel-cloud’s position also permits an interpretation of contemptuous superiority.
• Shrapnel-cloud — A cloud associated with an exploding shell and its deadly contents, personified as making a dismissive gesture.
• Leisurely — Unhurried or taking time, describing the cloud’s imagined gesture beside the soldier’s death.
• Tittered — Laughed in a small, restrained and potentially unkind manner, as the splinters appear to do.
• Love-languid — Apparently weak or dreamy with love; the description remains qualified by the observer’s word seemed.
• Bayonets — Blades fitted to rifles, imagined here as long teeth forming a threatening grin.
• Rabbles — Disorderly crowds; the shells are imagined as noisy groups that hoot and groan.
• Pararhyme — Near rhyme in which corresponding consonant sounds surround differing vowels, creating resemblance without full sound agreement.
• Personification — Giving non-human things human actions or qualities, such as weapons appearing to laugh or gesture.
• Onomatopoeia — Wording whose sound suggests the noise it describes, connecting verbal expression with sensory experience.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The first soldier certainly prays. Correct: The reporting voice leaves open whether he curses vainly or actually prays; his intention is not settled.
• Misconception: The second soldier is a child who dies happily. Correct: Childlike describes his smile, not his age; smiling at nothing while dead does not establish happiness.
• Misconception: The third soldier is certainly daydreaming peacefully about his beloved. Correct: His mood only seemed languid with love. The observer’s qualification must be retained.
• Misconception: The third soldier kisses his beloved or is lowered by named comrades. Correct: His face contacts mud, and the poem does not identify anyone who lowers it.
• Misconception: Owen laughs at the soldiers. Correct: The mocking actions belong to personified weapons; the contrast can evoke the reader’s pity for the men.
• Misconception: The title means that a soldier survives and wins. Correct: The weapons seem to have the final response, making the idea of triumph bitterly ironic.
• Misconception: The poem has a regular full-rhyme scheme. Correct: Its opening pairs use near rhyme; the complete stanzas do not sustain a regular full-rhyme arrangement.
• Misconception: Each soldier is explicitly killed by every weapon mentioned beside him. Correct: The poem juxtaposes men and weapons without providing a complete account of each injury’s cause.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. In stanza one, the reporting voice considers whether the soldier cursed vainly or actually prayed after crying out in religious language. What uncertainty remains, and why must a reading preserve it? [2 marks]

1. The soldier’s intention remains unresolved: his cry may be a curse or a prayer.
2. A reading must preserve both possibilities because the reporting voice does not confirm either one.

Q2. A soldier calls for his mother and father, then smiles at nothing, childlike and dead. A high shrapnel-cloud makes an unhurried contemptuous gesture, while splinters seem to spit and laugh. Explain three contrasts between the soldier and his surroundings. [3 marks]

1. The appeal to his parents suggests an intimate human attachment, while the weapons’ contempt provides a hostile response rather than familial comfort.
2. The childlike smile suggests vulnerability, while the high cloud’s unhurried gesture can suggest superiority and indifference to the man below.
3. The man’s death ends his appeal, while the splinters remain apparently active and mocking, giving destructive objects the continuing presence in the scene.

Q3. In stanza three, a man calls for his love; his mood seemed languid with love. His face is slowly lowered into mud. No person lowering him is identified. Explain four details that a careful interpretation must preserve. [4 marks]

1. The man’s appeal is directed towards love, giving the scene a recognisable emotional attachment beyond the immediate violence around him.
2. The word seemed makes his apparent mood uncertain; it does not establish a peaceful or happy state of mind.
3. The face contacts mud rather than a beloved person, transforming an action associated with affection into a disturbing physical image.
4. The description leaves the agent of the lowering unspecified, so an interpretation must not add helpers or a burial scene.

Q4. The poem has three five-line stanzas. Each begins with two lines about a soldier, followed by three about weapons or destructive material. The opening end-word pairs are died / indeed, Dad / dead and mood / mud, with differing stressed vowels. Explain four effects or features of this form. [4 marks]

1. The repeated five-line units create a consistent arrangement, allowing the reader to compare the three human scenes.
2. The two opening lines give each soldier a brief individual presence before the attention shifts towards destructive objects.
3. The three closing lines repeatedly give the weapons the final position, supporting their apparent dominance over human appeals.
4. The opening word pairs create near rhyme through consonant resemblance and vowel difference, joining the lines without the complete agreement of full rhyme.

Q5. Around dying soldiers, machine-guns appear to chuckle; a large gun laughs loudly; a shrapnel-cloud gestures contemptuously; bayonets become grinning teeth; and shells resemble a noisy disorderly crowd. Identify and explain five ways these details make the weapons seem hostile. [5 marks]

1. The machine-guns’ chuckling personifies them, giving a mechanical sound the apparent attitude of a person amused by someone else’s suffering.
2. The large gun’s loud laughter enlarges that imagined amusement, making the destructive environment seem openly delighted rather than merely indifferent.
3. The shrapnel-cloud’s gesture gives non-human material an apparently deliberate expression of contempt, as though it could judge the helpless soldier.
4. The bayonets’ teeth form a metaphor for blades, while their grin adds personification; the combined image makes danger look maliciously pleased.
5. The shells’ resemblance to a disorderly crowd turns separate objects into an imagined hostile gathering, reinforcing the sense of numerous threats surrounding human vulnerability.

Q6. The title is The Last Laugh. Three soldiers make brief appeals involving religious language, parents and love. Each stanza then ends with weapons apparently mocking them. The final sound is gas hissing. Using these details, explain the title’s irony and the poem’s message in six points. [6 marks]

1. The familiar idea of having the last laugh suggests eventual triumph, creating an expectation that someone will finally gain the advantage.
2. Here the apparent advantage belongs to destructive objects, because the weapons repeatedly make the final response after the soldiers’ brief appeals.
3. This reversal makes the title bitterly ironic: the apparent victors are instruments of injury rather than human beings whose success readers can welcome.
4. The men’s appeals reveal recognisable attachments to belief, family and love, strengthening their humanity against the surrounding instruments’ imagined contempt.
5. The final hiss is not literal laughter, but it extends the larger pattern of hostile sounds continuing after a human voice.
6. Together, these contrasts support an anti-war reading that emphasises vulnerable lives and the cruelty of destruction rather than celebrating military grandeur.

Key takeaways

• Wilfred Owen presents three unnamed soldiers through brief final appeals, setting their humanity against the imagined mockery of weapons.
• The first soldier’s religious cry remains uncertain between a vain curse and an actual prayer.
• The second soldier’s childlike smile suggests vulnerability; it does not establish his age or prove that he dies happily.
• The third soldier only seems languid with love, before the movement of his face into mud transforms affectionate imagery.
• Each five-line stanza moves from two lines about a soldier to three lines focused on destructive objects or material.
• Personification, sensory imagery, metaphor and sound effects make the battlefield appear capable of contempt and malicious amusement.
• The opening line pairs use near rhyme, while the complete stanzas avoid a regular pattern of full end-rhyme.
• The title gives apparent triumph to the weapons, creating bitter irony and supporting a reading centred on warfare’s human cost.

Test yourself

What two possible intentions does the reporting voice leave open for the first soldier?

He may be cursing vainly or actually praying; the reporting voice does not choose between these possibilities.

Why must childlike not be treated as a statement of the second soldier’s age?

It describes the quality of his smile, suggesting vulnerability without identifying him as a literal child.

Which qualification limits the description of the third soldier’s mood?

Seemed marks the description as an appearance observed from outside, rather than certain knowledge of his feelings.

What happens to the image of a kiss in the final stanza?

The soldier’s face contacts mud rather than a beloved person, turning affectionate imagery into a disturbing physical scene.

What repeated division organises every stanza?

Two lines focus on a soldier, followed by three lines about weapons or destructive battlefield material.

How do the bayonets combine metaphor with personification?

Their blades become teeth through metaphor, while their imagined grin gives them a human expression through personification.

Why does the final hiss still fit a title about laughter?

It extends the pattern of hostile weapon responses, so the title suggests apparent triumph rather than requiring literal final laughter.

What distinguishes the weapons’ attitude from the poem’s effect on a reader?

The weapons seem mocking, while their cruelty can make readers feel pity for the soldiers and horror at warfare.