GCSE ENGLISH LITERATURE- poetry

Mametz Wood- Owen Sheers

The use of '-' (hypthen) emphasises the next point and draws attention to what will occur after.
"the wasted young" shows the futility of the fragile youth, these young soldiers died when they had a large amounts of protential but war ended this.
The bodies were broken and the bones are fragile like China and are easily broken. It also shows that the their lives are precious like a 'china plate'.
The short paragraphs relfect the the chipped bones.

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uses personal pronouns (you) to direct at the reader
short stanzas, which gives the text a broken up feel. It is disjointed and fractured. A methaphore of the broken lives caused by the twin towers as people died and left empty spaces for family and friends.
uses first person narrative, which gives the poem a personal feel. It shows the 9 11 attacks affected real people.
There is no rhyming pattern, and enjebment which shows that there was no order or regularity for who died in 911. No one person was the same so everyone is idvidual like the poem.
"the heat behind me is bullying" which is personification, but the use of bullying could also refer to the terrorists who are bullies who are probably inscure about themselves.
There is repeatition of words like 'waving' and 'watching' which emphasises these points.

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repeatition of 'Palestine Street' sounds authentic because of the place name. is a major thoroughfare in Baghdad. The Tigris is the great river that runs through the city. A 'muezzin' is responsible for calling people to prayer at a mosque, sometimes very early in the morning.
the use of the hypthen emphases the following point
'prayer' shows the culture are religous and are basing their futures on the hope of God. Shows their voulnerability
'salutes were those of the imperial guard' shows they know respect
"'The Yellow Palm is a ballad with a deliberately repetitive refrain - "As I made my way down Palestine Street'. In a way it's a song lyric and I've used it a good deal in my public readings. People react well to its rhythm and rhymes." what the poet says about the poem
Palms are hugely important in Iraq as a source of food. It was common to see great mounds of dates in the city, harvested from the palms. And as Baghdad has extremely hot summers, the temperature sometimes reaching above 50 degrees Celsius, trees are vital for shade and cooling the air.

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Set against the sensitive post-9/11 backdrop of political and religious tensions, ‘The Right Word’ seems at first to contradict this description. The use of questions and alternative ways of describing someone suggests a poem full of doubt, where words are ‘waving, wavering flags’ and nothing can be pinned down with certainty. Confusion, fear and distrust prevail.
However, the poem dramatises the search to know one’s own mind, the process of moving from uncertainty to certainty. It is when it moves from considering the problem at the political level (‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter’) to the personal (‘I saw his face’) that the doubt and fear is removed.
'a boy who looks like your son' every terrorist, or fighter is someones son. He belongs to a family with people who love him and can see his better, true, unmanipulated side and should not be feared. How would his mother feel?
The stanzas are different lengths to reflect the narrators different thoughts and opinions of the terrorist.
'takes off his shoes' shows he has respect and can follow social rules on how to act in a strangers home

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Iraq is credited as being the home of the first civilisation, that between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This means that people have lived in ordered communities there for eight thousand years. Some scholars believe that the first writing system was used in Iraq. Whether particular dates or discoveries occurred is irrelevant to the fact that the culture is very old and there is a sense of the ancient ingrained in the people.
However, its history has been far from peaceful. Elamites, Alexander the Great, Parthians, Romans and Persians are amongst the early conquerors of the region. In the 7th century CE Islam was established in the area and Baghdad became the leading Islamic city for five hundred years.
Iraq continued to be a disputed region over the centuries. For example, during the First World War over 90,000 British troops were lost in the area.
In 1926 the modern Iraqi state included the regions of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul under the rule of the British. However, this changed in 1932 with independence. Several coups and occupations followed until 1979 when Saddam Hussein took over. Soon after he became ruler, Iraq came into conflict with Iran. Saddam Hussein decided to punish the Kurds for supporting Iran by using chemical weapons against them. These attacks continued for some time.

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