Kamikaze (TOP 5)

Question 1

Kamikaze context (Garland)

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Kamikaze context (Japan)

Answer 2

• Military attitudes were founded on codes of honour and self-sacrifice. Typically kamikaze pilots were volunteers which convey how firmly people were indoctrinated, but at the end of the water military had to recruit people unwillingly.

Question 3

Kamikaze (Quote 1)

Answer 3

“Kamikaze” and “Her Father”

“Father” Imbues poem with sense of intimacy, where Garland’s ability to see beneath the facade of a soldier suggests that she is questioning ethics of patriotism. Juxtaposition between disparity of pilots assigned role and personal role of father - military expectations corrupt familial life and strip a person of agency.

Question 4

Kamikaze (Quote 2)

Answer 4

“Full of powerful incantations”
Suggests pilot was under an indoctrinating propaganda spell, portraying influence of propaganda as hypnotic and bewitching. Irony on “powerful” as it contrasts from how powerless the pilot is to the propaganda enforced on him, and his dehumanisation/marginalisation when he goes home.

Question 5

Kamikaze form

Answer 5

Divided into sestets. First 5 describe father’s mission, yet final 2 explore return, compressing his life as meaningless and marginalised compared to the mission of kamikaze. Gravitas of decision cut his life short.

Initially written in free verse, mimicking flight of plane. End resorts to iambs, reinstating a melancholy tone, mirroring an elegy.

Question 6

Kamikaze links

Answer 6

Identity - exposure
Human control - exposure
war - bayonet charge
memories - poppies

Question 7

Kamikaze structure

Answer 7

Enjambment - mirrors pilots disrupted mind

lack of rhyme scheme- presents poem in prosaic manner, strays from any romantic flourishes that could glorify story.