Giuseppe

Question 1

overview

Answer 1

• about a community in WW2 who are dying of hunger and rationalise cannabilsm of eating a pregnant woman
• issues of exclusion, othering and prejudice vs power
• explores how war corrupts morality, how myth becomes a mask for violence, and how complicity and silence preserve atrocity
• poem’s power lies in its ambiguity: is the mermaid real, or a metaphor for women or victims during wartime? Either way, Ford uses myth and metaphor to confront historical atrocity and moral silence

Question 2

form

Answer 2

• free verse
• lack of rhyme
• simple lang= oral story creating care free tone
• conversational phrasing masks the violence to come, and the familial distance (“My Uncle”) creates an air of inherited guilt and oral tradition
• poem is delivered in a single stanza, almost like a confession or memory being unburdened
  = flat, prose-like tone contrasts with the surreal content, enhancing the horror through understatement
  = no figurative embellishment, no romanticising which reflects the speaker’s moral numbness or learned silence
• lack of overt commentary demands the reader fill in the emotional weight, reinforcing the idea of suppressed trauma and inherited guilt

Question 3

denial/ guilt

Answer 3

• ‘captive mermaid’
  = image of a voiceless victim trapped and unable to escape= treated like an animal= resonates no trace of humanity in the speaker’s description
• ‘work was butchered’
  = enjambment creates confusion and chaos as a result of WW2
  = humanity is fractured= justify atrocities of abuse and pain which has led ppl to abandon human morality
• ‘couldn’t look me in the eye’
  = guilt deepened= cant eras an act of such brutality as it still haunts him
• “The rest they cooked and fed to the troops”
  = cold, factual, and devoid of emotional engagement
  = emotional distance mirrors the speaker’s earlier detachment and underscores how atrocity becomes rationalised through euphemism and necessity of human survival
• shift to “they” further anonymises the perpetrators
  = reinforcing idea of diffused accountability= a recurring motif throughout the poem
  = use of the passive voice “a large fish had been found” erases any subject, avoiding the moral reality that a sentient being was slaughtered
  = detachment reflects how language is weaponised not just to dehumanise, but to erase
• “Starvation forgives men many things”
  = serves as a chilling moral loophole= gestures toward the real historical suffering of wartime, where survival often justified inhumanity
  = Ford uses it ironically while starvation might “forgive,” it does not erase the moral consequences
  = positioning of this phrase sandwiched between confessions forces the reader to confront the ambiguity of moral judgment in desperate contexts

Question 4

religion

Answer 4

• ‘doctor’ and ‘priest’ heavily ironic as they symbolise help, reason and morality yet they’ve abandoned any morality in face of hunger
  = participate in brutal murder of an innocent victim
  -

Question 5

dehumanisation

Answer 5

• ‘she, it’
  = separated by caesura which emphasises excuse mechanisms used in hope to reconcile their minds
  = create distance between men and women to question who the real animal is
• “she was simple,” “just a fish”
  = language is weaponised to deny humanity, much like wartime propaganda that demonises or degrades its victims
• ‘tried to take her wedding ring’
  = even in death she’s being abused and tormented
  = try to strip and humanity left
  = reflects economic selfishness driven into human nature
• “They put her head and her hands / in a box for burial”
  = disturbingly partial form of respect, offering ritual wo true remorse

Question 6

atrocity of HN

Answer 6

• “fish can’t speak,” yet this is contradicted by the visceral line “she screamed like a woman in terrible fear.”
  = simile collapses the myth/reality divide, forcing the reader to hear a real woman behind the metaphor
  = moment foregrounds the emotional truth of the poem, regardless of species or belief, suffering is real
  = only realise horror once deed is done
• mermaid symbolised last hope for humanity
  = innocence quickly murdered to reflect dehumanising and immoral affects of war
• bodily violation through image of “a ripe gold roe” taken from the mermaid’s side
  = sensual language of “ripe,” “gold” contrasts with the brutality of the act
  = doctor’s pronouncement—“this was proof she was just a fish / and anyway an egg is not a child” echoes convenient moral loopholes often used to justify violence
  = refusal to eat the roe, suggests repressed guilt or recognition of wrongdoing, even as others continue to rationalise
  = contradiction subtly critiques the moral evasions people adopt during war, where rationalisation often coexists with unease