While I was reading this issue of Blast Magazine, I was thinking mostly about why the magazine was given this title, and what was meant by all of the instances of the word "BLAST" that appear, especially in the Manifesto near the beginning of the magazine. For example, on pages 18-19, in the 6th section of the Manifesto, it reads "BLAST YEARS 19837 TO 1900//CURSE ABYSMAL INEXCUSABLE MIDDLE-CLASS", which is an explicit and direct attack upon the Victorian Period. In this context, the authors are using violent rhetoric, with the language of war and weaponry, to express their discontent with the past.

This magazine is avant-garde for several reasons. For one, the typographical layout is striking and aggressive, as everything is written in bold, all capital letters. It also makes direct references to the reader, for example: "Curse those who will hang over this manifesto with silly canines exposed". It is meant to shame those who are not in line with what this manifesto is calling for (as any manifesto would do). And the fact that a Manifesto is one of the first things in the magazine is like drawing a line in the sand. This aggressive stance taken by Wyndham Lewis and the other contributors is similar to the prevailing international opinion in 1914: that a huge world war (a "BLAST") would effectively erase the past and allow humanity to start building a brighter future. Unequivocally taking a position against any reader who does not adhere to the Vorticist ideals, BLAST is an attempt to catalog the virtues that ought to be a part of that new world, such as individualism, a lack of class distinctions, and a frank way of dealing with the world through unhindered artistic expression.