Power and Conflict key quote part 2
- Created by: Alicejacobs
- Created on: 15-03-20 11:31
View mindmap
- Power and Conflict- Key quotes: Part 2
- Poppies
- 'Three days before Armistice Sunday.'
- Deliberately filled with as semantic field of military combat and war. Narrative structure moves through the time.
- 'Steeled the softening of my face.
- Metaphor. Trying not to cry- present- mother has to be as strong as steel to hold back emotions.
- 'Play at Eskimos like we did when you were little.'
- Theme of loss of childhood. Shows vulnerability of son by sharing memories .
- 'Poppies had been placed on individual war graves.'
- Suggests recent loss of soldiers/ remembrance of all they have done for us.
- 'My stomach busy making tucks, darts, pleats. hat-less.'
- Asyndetic list. Semantic field of textile jobs. Context- poets business.
- 'the world overflowing like a treasure chest.'
- Simile- Freedom of the boy expresses excitement, juxtaposed with the mother's anxiety.
- 'Gelled blackthorns.'
- Metaphor- texture of spiny bush, suggests carefully sculptured hair of young son.
- 'spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade.'
- Onomatopoeic 'spasms' and personification 'spasms of paper'. 'red' colour imagery. 'blockade' lexical field of pain- imagery of blood and wounds.
- 'I traced the inscriptions on the war memorial.'
- Ambiguity. Son's name on memorial?Allows poem to become accessible to all mothers and sons in conflict
- 'like a wishbone.'
- Simile- implies making a wish as well as suggesting her memory reflecting on mealtimes.
- 'The dove pulled freely against the sky, an ornamental stitch.
- Metaphor- combining both bird and textile imagery. Pulls together the mother's feelings of tension and longing for peace.
- 'Hoping to hear you playground voices catching in the wind.'
- Theme of childhood- implies comfort in a return of old patterns of behaviour.
- 'Three days before Armistice Sunday.'
- Tissue
- 'Paper thinned by age or touching.' and 'well used books.'
- Bible: Christian holy book metaphor of light in christianity- Jesus 'I am the light of the world.'
- Paper used in old Bibles called 'indiapaper' which is very tough and see through.
- Enjambment- break between stanzas conveys the difference between power of man and God.
- 'If buildings were paper'
- In real world paper is not powerful and one would not build out of it.
- 'the names and histories, who was born to whom, the height and weight, who died where and how, on which sepia date.'
- Families holy books contain important family details at the back and stays i family forever. Dharker suggests this disrespects God by writing in the holy book.
- 'Maps too.'
- Man makes decisions about borders. Paper has power when it is used to divide/segregate to mark out to control.
- 'the marks that rivers make, roads, railtracks, mountainfolds.'
- Asyndetic list. Shows tight control suggesting man exerts his power over nature. Enjambment undermines this.
- 'what was paid by credit card might fly our lives like paper kites.
- Man-made power is not permanent. Man does not really have power (ref Ozymandias)
- 'Paper that lets the light shine through, this is what could alter things.'
- Metaphor for power of God it can 'alter things'
- 'Paper thinned by age or touching.' and 'well used books.'
- The Emigrée
- 'I left it as a child.'
- First person/exile: speaker seems to be an exile from an unknown country.
- 'sunlight-clear' 'bright' 'sunlight'
- Light imagery conveys speakers idealised memories pf childhood in the city.
- 'bright, filled paperweight.' 'sick with tyrants' 'I am branded by an impression of sunlight.'
- Metaphor: 1. memories. 2.rulers are a sickness. 3. Memories are permanent.
- 'I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.'
- Personification. Maternal love.
- 'My city takes me dancing.'
- Personification of romantic love.
- 'My shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.'
- Extended metaphor/conceit (comparison runs throughout the poem) Perhaps the mysterious, now unreachable city the speaker recollects is meant to represent the past which they cannot return to.
- 'time rolls its tanks'
- Metaphor of time.
- 'frontiers run between us, close, like waves.'
- Simile suggesting exile.
- 'I have no passport, there's no way back.'
- Creates the semantic field of exile.
- 'its own white plane.'
- Flat, level, imaginary city on paper? link to Tissue.
- 'I left it as a child.'
- Checking Out Me History
- 'Dem tell me Dem tell me Wha dem want to tell me'
- Power of three/repetition/anaphora. shows protest and frustration and it repeated throughout.
- 'Bandage up me eye with me own history. Blind me to me own identity.'
- Someone (Europeans) has wielded their power to teach them the wrong history.
- '1066' '**** Whittington' 'Lord Nelson' 'Waterloo' 'Columbus and 1492' 'Florence Nightingale' 'Robin Hood' 'King Cole'
- British and European historical references used to support that the speaker felt neglected by being taught other countries history, not his own.
- 'Toussaint a slave with vision lick black Napoleon battalion.'
- Written in italics to show true historic Caribbean figures.
- 'I checking out me own history I carving out me identity
- He has stopped listening now, Creole, rejecting formal standard English. 'Carving out me identity' emancipation. deliberate action, still happening- present participle.
- 'King Cole was a merry ole soul'
- Ironic- own fables not important. Patronised by British nursery rhymes.
- 'man who discover de balloon'
- Grammatical errors- highlight speakers Creole accent.
- 'but dem never tell me bout Mary Seacole'
- Context: Not supported by British- in 2016 a statue was built in honour of her due to this poem being written. In the Crimean War, she had to go alone with no support.
- 'Dem tell me Dem tell me Wha dem want to tell me'
- Kamikaze
- 'Her father embarked at sunrise.'
- Initial narration in third person. Unconnected to events.
- Language: 'embarked' creates a sense of journey, but title shows it's a journey to his death.
- Context: Japan known as 'land of rising sun' may be ref to location.
- 'powerful incantations and enough fuel for a one-way journey into history.'
- Language: Pilot under a spell linked to influence of patriotic propaganda that kamikazes were expected to do. prayers of pilots? His own thoughts? They were told that it is a great honour to die for their country.
- 'shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun'
- Language: Sibilance hints at the movement of the samurai sword in line 2. Ironic as pilot turns away from conflict. Also, sibilance reflects the movement of the fish in the water.
- 'built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles'
- Imagery: Sensory imagery. These are innocent childhood memories and activities that contrast his job of war.
- 'but half way there,'
- Second stanza begins with the conjunction 'but' changes direction. The plane is still flying but it is going to turn around.
- 'and though he came back/ my mother never spoke again/in his presence, not did she meet his eyes.'
- Narrative voice. Volta shifts to daughters indirect speech in a more factual less descriptive way about her fathers subsequent life hinting at her pain and empathy for him. Italics show shift to daughter's voice.
- 'and sometimes, she said, he must have wondered/ which had been a better way to die.'
- Final short sentence-comments on the destructiveness of patriotism- the family are so ashamed they treat him as if he's dead. He may have wished that he'd fulfilled his mission- either way his story ends with a kind of death.
- 'no longer the father we loved.'
- Pilot's life forever changed as life regained not what he thought. He lost his life anyway in refusing to die honourably. Pathos? Poignant? Sad? Anticlimatic?
- 'safe'
- Language: repetition of 'safe' hints at pilot's mindset that he doesn't want his children to face the pain of loosing him.
- 'Her father embarked at sunrise.'
- Poppies
Similar English Literature resources:
Teacher recommended
Comments
No comments have yet been made