The Emigree Flashcards
‘there once was a country’
The use of elipses creating a caesura creating a flashback of a memory
‘my memory of it is sunlight-clear’
This is Pathetic Fallacy as the concept of Sunlight creates a positive image which juxtaposes her understanding as an Adult
‘which i am told comes to the mildest city’
Draws the distinction between real life experience and what the speaker has heard
‘the bright filled paper weight’
This is a metaphor showing the idea of the city as a souvenir as it is shiny and unrealistic.
‘it may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants’
This is personifying the city to create the sense that it has been infected but can recover as this is hopeful but yet a deluded idea
‘but i am branded by an impression of sunlight’
Connotation ‘branded’ conveys the sense of marked for wrongness and the use of repetition with Sunlight
‘the white streets of that city, the graceful slopes’
Conveying the innocence and purity
‘glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks’
Personifying time to emphasise its relentless and destructive nature linking to the tanks used in War
‘soon i shall have every coloured molecule of it’
This is a metaphor linking the memory of the city, with tiny traces represented by the ‘molecule’ to emphasise the value of preciousness with the memory
‘but i cant get it off my tongue’
This is Synaesthesia to show the blur between taste and vision as this conveys the jumbling of senses and confusion of memory
‘it lies down infant of me, docile as paper’
This is a metaphor emphasising the open and emptiness but also the venerability
‘i come its hair and love its shining eyes’
This is personification as she treats her memory with almost child like tenderness, reflects her own memories of childhood linked to the city
‘they accuse me of being dark in their free city’
Repetition of ‘accusing’ to give a sinister impression towards the city
‘and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight’
The contrast of Darkness and light used to show the speaker coming to terms with the two separate identities
