W.H Auden: Miss Gee (incomplete)

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  • Created by: LITBC
  • Created on: 11-04-14 21:46
Voices:
Told from an outsider's perspective, it dominates the story and helps prevail Miss Gee's lonely life. The voice is not attached to Miss Gee personally. The voice zooms in and out of Miss Gee's life simultaneously whilst zooming in on other con
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Point of View
The narrator adapts different point of views – Miss Gees first, then Doctor Thomas and lastly the Oxford groupers/Mr Rose the lecturer. This is to heighten how absurd Miss Gee's life really is as they all lack any positive memories of Miss Gee or ev
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Characters
Miss Gee is the centre of the poem. The Doctor comes in late during the poem where he takes on an active role contrasting with the Vicar where he is only active in Miss Gee's imagination/dream, not the poem itself. Miss Gee's characteristic is shown
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Summary:
The story concerns a lonely spinster, who appears to be repressed and religious. She has dreams about the vicar at her church, but otherwise seems to have no romance in her life. She visits the doctor and is diagnosed with an “oat cell carcinoma.” Sh
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Links to other poems:
Like most of the poems, it is pessimistic. It deals with thwarted hopes and the inevitability of death. It uses the ballad form, as do “As I Walked Out One Evening” and “O What Is That Sound.”
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Form:
A ballad. The ballad form was used for stories that could often be set to music. Folk songs and poems often employed the form. It usually features verses of four lines with lines two and four rhyming. It would be in iambic metre (unstressed/stress
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Narrative perspective/voices:
first person narrator who is anonymous, ironic, wry and detached but one who is omniscient, sense of a recorder of events, internal voice of Miss Gee, the vicar, Doctor Thomas, comic/ serious tone, etc.
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Setting
rural England 1930s
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Ballad
use of abcb rhyme scheme, use of quatrains, blues song (originally set to the tune of ‘St James’ Infirmary’), regular rhythm, etc.
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Use of framed narration:
linear chronology with a time jump at the end, repetition of phrasing, direct opening, central crisis – her illness, narrative gap about her actual death, comic abrupt ending, etc.
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Use of simple often monosyllabic language,
use of speech, contemporary references - ‘Oxford Groupers’, use of detail, symbolism, imagery of repression, use of names, title of poem, use of temporal markers, use of slapstick humour, use of contrast, use of the apostrophe, use of simple co
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

The narrator adapts different point of views – Miss Gees first, then Doctor Thomas and lastly the Oxford groupers/Mr Rose the lecturer. This is to heighten how absurd Miss Gee's life really is as they all lack any positive memories of Miss Gee or ev

Back

Point of View

Card 3

Front

Miss Gee is the centre of the poem. The Doctor comes in late during the poem where he takes on an active role contrasting with the Vicar where he is only active in Miss Gee's imagination/dream, not the poem itself. Miss Gee's characteristic is shown

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

The story concerns a lonely spinster, who appears to be repressed and religious. She has dreams about the vicar at her church, but otherwise seems to have no romance in her life. She visits the doctor and is diagnosed with an “oat cell carcinoma.” Sh

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Like most of the poems, it is pessimistic. It deals with thwarted hopes and the inevitability of death. It uses the ballad form, as do “As I Walked Out One Evening” and “O What Is That Sound.”

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
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