The Emigree Flashcards
CONTEXT
The main context of The Émigrée is displacement; the forced upheaval of local people and the need to flee a home country.
She wrote the poem in 1993, at a time of great upheaval for thousands of people, specifically in parts of Asia.
However, there is always conflict happening somewhere in the world, forcing people to leave their homes.
The poet suggests that the city the speaker leaves may be war-torn or under the control of a dictatorial government
Neither the specific city or country are named
This lack of specific detail is intentional, as Rumens wants her poem to be relevant to as many people as possible.
Purpose and Meanings Overall
The speaker may have claimed asylum in the new city and doesn’t feel at home there.
This reflects the hostility and discrimination refugees can experience in a new country.
In this poem, Rumens is highlighting the long-term effects of war and conflict on people and their identity.
It shows how so much of our identity is tied to a place.
Exploration of Memory
The poem focuses on the memories the speaker has of their former home city.
The city represents hope, happiness and clarity.
Childhood memories are often the strongest, but they can be unreliable.
The speaker confesses that whatever she learns of her home city now, she will always have a positive, fairy-tale and child-like memory of it.
The poem suggests that any human conflict and aggression, which forces people out of their homes and country, can never erase human memories that we associate with happier times.
So despite whatever circumstances forced the poem’s speaker to leave their home city, nothing can diminish the perfect, light-filled impression the speaker’s childhood memories have left.
In this way, identity is also tied strongly to memory.
“There once was a country…”
Conventional opening to fairy tale alludes to the speaker’s child-like innocence.
“Was” hints that even though the country is still existent, her ideal and image of it only exists in the past.
rose-tinted lems
The Émigrée
Rumens has chosen to give her narrator a feminine perspective.
“But my memory of it is sunlight-clear”
The poet uses epistrophe, as every stanza ends with a reference to sunlight. For her, no feelings of pain, loss or hatred can outweigh her sunlit, dream-like memory of her country and this is made clear through the repetition as the “sunlight” immediately juxtaposes all other negative details of her country presently at war.
Who wrote the poem?
Carol Rumens
“which, I am told, comes to the mildest city”
Detatchment - she has no real picture - only an image formed by her distant memories and stories others have told.
“the worst news I receive of it cannot break my original view”
Contrasts her adult, grown-up experience to her fanciful, almost fairy-tale resembling childhood one; the harsh realities of war, tyranny - more realistic - our narrator is a naive persona, perhaps a little delusional and narrow minded as a defence mechanism since she wants to protect her “original view” and her memories from being “broken” by anything.
Since she had no control over protecting her country, she is protecting her memories instead with the hope that she can save it or prevent them from getting damaged.
“bright, filled paperweight”
Metaphor for the beauty of her country in her image, but also perhaps for the way she conceals the precious memories, deep inside of her, like the designs and pictures in a paperweight. The metaphor also explores the richness of memory and the value, but also the solidity, as her perception of her country cannot change no matter what, and remains solid in a single time frame.
“sick with tyrants”
Metaphorical for an illness - suggests that although the suffering in her country can be cured, like a disease, tyranny and undemocratic, dictatorships can spread and grow increasingly severe over time.
“I am branded by an impression of sunlight”
The branding metaphor implies that her memories (if we take sunlight to represent those memories, and the beauty/light/hope associated with them) are unshakeable and that she is a part of her country permanently and defined and made up of this ‘sunlight’.
“impression” suggests that her country molds and forms her, and will always have its traces in her and that the pure image of her country is almost burnt into her mind… this alludes to the idea of ‘first impressions’ lasting suggesting that the first impression she has of her country will forever be her last.
“as time rolls its tanks”
War imagery - time and place were disturbed once the war (tanks) arrived - threatening to erode the speaker’s memories as the years go by, the speaker holds tightly to what little she has of her home.
“frontiers rise between us, close like waves”
SEMANTIC FIELD OF WAR:
War causes seperation and isolation - ‘us’ signals that she feels one with her country.
The ‘waves’ are the representation of nature that cannot be stopped, and everyone has to accept that it will certainly happen - and much like this people are left helpless at the hands of war.
“That child’s vocabulary I carried here like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.”
Theme of language: it’s a part of out culture and identity that remains with us always.
“hollow doll” - simile of fragilty shows how vulnerable she was left as a child departing her country. The reference to a ‘doll’ suggests innocence of childhood and how unaware she may have been as a child of what her future held.
“hollow” could be emphasising the carelessness of powers towards human lives. They play around with their lives like dolls or puppets and are dehumanised at their hands - (hollow of meaning and worth and treated as incapable of feeling).
-> shows the cold, cruel and merciless nature of war which juxtaposes with the speakers innocent, fragile and delicate view of her country.
