Kamikaze Flashcards
1
Q
What is the conflict of Beactrice Garland’s ‘Kamikaze’?
A
- Set around a kamikaze pilot flying to war and turning back before it was too late
- considered a great honour in Japan to die for your country
- Pilot returns home to be exiled by his family forever
- poem written from both narrator and daughter of the pilot who explains how they excluded her father
- Poet questions at the end if death would have been better.
2
Q
“little fishing boats strung out like bunting”
A
- emphasises attractive temptation
3
Q
“blue-green translucent sea”
A
4
Q
“journey into history”
A
- symbolises his inner conflict
5
Q
“figure of eight”
A
- symbolic
- repetitive cycle
- trapped by destiny, no way out, each option bad
6
Q
“shoals of fishes slashing silver”
A
- fish represents air craft
- silver is a metaphor for their honour and glory
- ambiguity
- his fate linked, eventually be caught
7
Q
“loose silver of whitebait and once a tuna”
A
- fish represent people like the pilot, caught in the net of mankind
- stuck in the same old patterns
- pilot is trapped in fishbowl
8
Q
“which was a better way to die”
A
- highlights conflict
- died in his families eyes
- tone of regret and sympathy
- he may not have died physically but died socially - which is worse?
9
Q
“shore, salt-sodden”
A
- sibillance reflects ocean sounds of wave going back and fourth
- reflection of his mind going back and fourth upon what to do
- wave going to back to shore, luring him to do the same
