kamikaze

Question 1

KAMIKAZE
context: what does Garland say?

Answer 1

“i spend a lot of the day listening to other people’s words” - poetry immerses herself in others perspectives

Question 2

KAMIKAZE
context: japan’s military

Answer 2

Japans military attitudes were founded on codes of honour and self sacrifice, they were typically volunteers - conveys how firmly people believed in these values, enough to sacrifice their own lives

Question 3

KAMIKAZE
title of poem “kamikaze” and “her father” (noun father)

Answer 3

noun father - imbues the poem with a sense of intimacy. Garlands ability to see the person beneath the façade of a soldier suggests that she is questioning the ethics of patriotism and how it disregards identity

Question 4

KAMIKAZE
title of poem “kamikaze” and “her father” (juxtaposition of military role as a kamikaze pilot)

Answer 4

military expectations corrupt familial life and strip a person of agency - there is a disparity between the pilots assigned role within the title of kamikaze and his person told her father

Question 5

KAMIKAZE
“full of powerful incantations” (image on incantations)

Answer 5

suggests the pilot was under an indoctrinating propaganda spell, it portrays the influence of propaganda as hypnotic and bewitching, this is contextually important as japanese soldiers were taught self sacrifice - only means by which they could win war

Question 6

KAMIKAZE
“full of powerful incantations” (irony on powerful)

Answer 6

use of power is bitterly ironic as the pilot is powerless to the propaganda enforced upon him and his dehumanisation and marginalisation when he goes back

Question 7

KAMIKAZE
form (sestets)

Answer 7

(stanzas of 6 lines) which can be grouped in two
first 5 - describe story of fathers mission
final 2 - explore his return, this compresses the years after his return to be far shorter than his flight that would’ve happened within minutes or hours
the gravitas of his decision within that one moment cut his life short

Question 8

KAMIKAZE
form (metre)

Answer 8

initially the poem is written in free verse to allow it to unfold quickly mimicking the flight of the plane
the end resorts to iambs which reinstate a steady and melancholic tone - mirrors a elegy ( speech about someone who has died)

Question 9

KAMIKAZE
poems it links to

Answer 9

exposure - identity robbed by the war, powerless to propaganda and war
bayonet charge - questioning the sacrifice
poppies - memories of loved ones tarnished by war