A poison tree (Songs of experience)

Question 1

Summary

Answer 1

• Two disparate/contrasting ways.
• Way 1; Angry with a friend, moves past it.
• Way 2; Angry with an enemy, keeps it in.
• Cultivates his anger, grows like a tree, grows an apple, enemy eats apple, dies.
• Allegory for the troubles when storing emotions and how proceeds to cycle of violence.

Question 2

Theme of Anger and Suppressed Emotion.

Answer 2

• Benefits of talking about anger,
• Supression of anger morally dangerous.
• Speaker doesn’t explain his anger, instead tends to his wrath as if it were a garden. Watering it with (‘fears’ ‘tears’). Careful nurturing = reluctance move on.
• Contrast, complex growth of a tree instead of the straightforward way of thinking in the first picture.

Question 3

The Apple (Symbols)

Answer 3

• Symbolises the growth of unspoken anger.
• Anger can contaminate people individually and the world as a whole.
• Apple common fruit, happens regularly, not unusual.
• Allusion to the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible. Punishment. Religious, timeless.

Question 4

Anaphora

Answer 4

• First stanza (‘I was angry with my …. I told’): I = inforces it is the writers choice.
• (‘and’) : List, commitment, heavy labour, effort, draining. Captivating, nursery rhymes, fits with his overall work. Children. Poems tension between innocence and experience.

Question 5

Extended Metaphor

Answer 5

• One extended metaphor. Symbolic manifestation.
• Indtead of rain, tears
• Sunshines, deceptive smiles.

Question 6

Caesura

Answer 6

• Parallel construction.

Question 7

End- Stopped (line of poetry comes to a conc at the end of a line)

Answer 7

• Almost every line
• Give an impression of an ongoing growth.
• Each line, like a branch on the tree.
• Speakers anger different stages.
• ## Affect pace of poem, separating the poem into smaller segments.

Question 8

Sibilance

Answer 8

• ‘sunned’ , ‘smiles’ ‘soft’ : stresses the growth of the tree is due to the speakers actions and thoughts.
• Hissing sound, snakes, religious undertones. anger, cunningness.

Question 9

Rhyme Scheme

Answer 9

• Each quatraun, two couplets rhymmes AABB. Perfect rhyms, nursery rhymes,

Question 10

Form

Answer 10

• Clear, moral message,
• Human kind in general.

Question 11

Quotes

Answer 11

• ‘and into my garden stole’ ‘when the the night had veild the pole’ : Thief uses darkness, eeries tone, unable to find common ground, clouded by hatred,
• ‘Till it bore an apple bright’ ; Temptation, anger is tempting, curropt,