Kamikaze

The sea: the traditional way of life and its close links to the sea have a timeless quality.

Mentions of fishing boats, different types of fish, the 'green-blue translucent sea', the shore, pebbles, 'the turbulent inrush of breakers', 'salt-sodden', 'awash'.

The pilot remembers details of the games he played with his brothers, the colours and patterns of the fish and the taste of the sea salt. These vivid memories suggest what he is about to lose and conveys a powerful sense of home-sickness.

The sea is one of the key themes of ‘Kamikaze’

Family life: there are repeated references to family members as the poem unfolds.

Mentions of father, brothers, grandfather, mother, children.

The story of the pilot is at last told to a whole new generation of grandchildren, who perhaps never met him. These references establish the consequences of the pilot's decision - his entire family and community judge him. The reader is invited to question whether the pilot is being judged too harshly, and to reflect on the practice of suicide missions in war.

The poem contrasts the vividness of the pilot's moment of choice with the disappointment of his life afterwards.

First section is full of vivid impressions of the senses. Colour is explored; 'green-blue translucent', 'dark shoals', 'flashing silver' and 'pearl-grey'. The senses of touch ('feathery') and taste ('salt-sodden') are evoked. The impressions remind the pilot he is alive and life is for relishing. There is no mention of the senses in the section of the poem that deals with events after his choice. There is silence and it is 'as though he had never returned'.

The poem is an attempt to come to terms with the past and achieve some kind of closure.

The speaker imagines how her father felt when he made his choice. 'He must have looked far down/ at the little fishing boats' - she does not know for sure and we are led to think she never talked to her father about what happened. The speaker does not criticise her father but instead presents an account of how he was treated on his return. This part of the story she knows from her own experience. It's presented in her own words, rather than as a third-person account - the quality of a confession. She admits her own behaviour, and looking back on it, can see that it was wrong.

The poem closes with a bleak view of her father that offers little comfort or tenderness.

The chattering and laughing of the previous line is silenced. The daughter's voice is presented in calm, measured language, as though the storyteller is deliberately suppressing or withholding her feelings. The final lines return to the third-person voice but the tone remains matter-of-fact. There is a suggestion the father may have been better off if he had carried out the suicide mission.