Power and Conflict Flashcards
(29 cards)
Exposure-
‘Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us… Wearied we keep awake but the night is silent’
Irony that ‘our brains ache’ is not actually hyperbole; they are literally aching from the cold. As well as this they relate to the damaging illusions experienced from the half-dying men
Merciless, divine punishment, killing men for going to war. POWER OF NATURE
Long lines draw out the length of time
Knives from nature rather than people
Assonance in the line slows it down; also gives connotations of cold (‘i’ is a cold letter)
Approximant alliteration draws out time
‘Night is silent’ subverts ideas- the night being silent should be a good thing but expectations are no longer reality- maybe hinting at the soldiers’ expectations of war vs the reality of war.
Exposure- title
Vulnerable to something
A serious medical condition caused by being outside in cold weather
Exposure-
‘Dawn massing the the east her melancholy army
Attack once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey’
More danger is seen from the weather than from the enemy soldiers. Nature is better armoured than the army itself
Pathetic fallacy both describing the men’s moods, and the weather itself- it reluctantly feels it must expel the horror of war from nature
Assonance and repetition shows how the attack is endless.
The pathetic fallacy of shivering again conveys the soldiers.
Exposure-
So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
-Is it that we are dying?
Irony of seductive sibilance as nature is seducing them in order to kill them.
Juxtaposes ideas of sleeping in the sun vs actually falling asleep where you freeze to death; two very contrasting ideas.
Littered with blossoms firstly suggests they are imagining the snowflakes as blossoms. Brain choosing to think happy memories as they may be his last. However, the blossoms are described as littered, which contrasts the beauty of blossoms usually with rubbish.
The wind brings clouds like the unpleasant blackbird song. It could be the last grip on reality left, or an annoying sound which is so typical of summer.
Rhetorical question shows they are having illusions. Their minds are slowing down and they are losing grip on reality.
Exposure-
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying
Double meaning of lie shows they do not really want to be out there.
If they truly loved God they wouldn’t go to war- ‘thou shalt not kill’
Owen actually trained to be a vicar, so there is an attack on war as going against the Christian faith.
Exposure-
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
People died quickly on the front lines, so they did not get to know each other well to avoid emotional attachment.
Metaphor of their eyes becoming ice has a double meaning- either their eyes of the dead are literally frozen stiff, or the identities of the burying-party have become ice; they cannot empathise as they have become unfeeling by BOTH OF the exposure.
Death at the hands of winter is better than getting shot in battle.
The half rhymes of the poem unsettle us. Nothing, not even the rhyme, happens.
Does something happening mean a political something (eg peace), or release from war through death?
London-
I wander through each chartered street (and chartered Thames)
Wander vs chartered- aimlessness vs structure
Chartered is polysemous- A document implying official ownership, or to be recorded on a map/grid implying systematisation.
Plosive alliteration shows industrial nature- harsh, jutting etc.
Chartered Thames shows nature being controlled.
London-
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
Alliteration and metaphor
Not physically held back, but their belief restricts them. Blake is attacking the thinking of Londoners.
London-
How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning church appalls
Child labour
Juxtaposition between poor and rich
The church said, that you could endure a bad life now as you would be rewarded in the afterlife.
Coal dust literally blackens things.
Appall- to shock
A pall- covering put over a coffin. Blake is suggesting it is putting the sweeps’ cries over London
London-
Runs in blood down palace walls
Symbolic metaphor- Black wants to see the nobility and aristocracy executed. War with France
London- context
Blake wrote songs of innocence and songs of experience. London is one of the few poems which has no innocence counterpart, showing he is wholly critical
Set during a time of poverty, child labour and war with France. Women has high death rates and no rights, which Blake was passionate about.
Corruption of London- although Britain (in 1794) controlled 15-20% of the world land, London was still so dirty and corrupt.
Storm on the Island- Title
Parliament building of NI is called Stormont.
Island is a homophone of Ireland
Island connotes that the problem can be overcome as it is not a big one, although it seems huge.
London-
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse
Plagues- STIs from prostitution
Oxymoron of marriage hearse shows exploitative marriages lead to death
Storm on the Island-
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
This wizened earth has never troubled us.
Sinister sibilance reflects the conflict.
Guttural consonance represents the harsh atmosphere
Instead of building walls, we are sinking them. Juxtaposition.
Wizened- irony; initially shows ‘wise’, but then goes to mean ‘old’ to show how the society has become shrivelled.
Storm on the Island-
So that you can listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it pummels your house too
Writing about catholic and protestant with direct address- this shows division is an illusion.
Fricatives shows his anger at them listening to their own fears instead of him.
Fear is their joining factor. If you stop fearing the storm, then the storm will have no power to destroy you.
Any violence committed by one side is the same as that of the other. Your own actions destroy your own house.
Storm on the Island-
You might think that the sea is company,
Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs
Personification- juxtaposition between the true isolation of the sea and that they believe what they are doing is the only thing that matters.
Oxymoron of exploding comfortably- bombing was a large part of fighting. Heaney is trying to say we are becoming comfortable with this unnatural lifestyle.
Storm on the Island-
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
Oxymoron of huge nothing shows that the differences of people’s views are not actually as different as how they perceive it.
The last stanza only has 4 lines, showing how he wants the reader to write the final line as a resolve to the conflict; a campaign for change.
Kamikaze-
Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
Sunrise connotes both Japanese culture and divinity/God
Water is symbolic of purity
Sibilance is symbolic of the peacefulness he finds in death.
Kamikaze- (fish)
Like a huge flag waved first one way
Then the other in a figure of eight.
Simile with patriotic allusion- is ‘dying for the flag’ really worth it?
The flag returns on itself just as he does
Figure of eight connotes he is imagining his eternal death.
Kamikaze- (her father’s boat had)
The loose silver of whitebait, and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous
The fact the speaker calls him grandfather shows she has grown to welcome him back into the family ‘Yes, grandfather’s boat’
Loose silver- Judas Iscariot 30 pcs silver loose coins as well as loose morality. Represents betrayal of the country, like Judas betrayed Jesus.
Dark, muscular, dangerous- references the pilots decision to return. Not weak, but dangerous as he could be shunned from society.
Kamikaze-
Only we children still chattered and laughed
Till gradually we too learned
To be silent
The children still had a natural love of their father, and were grateful to have him back.
Volta at till gradually
Gradually shows that it is unnatural to disown father. It shows how Japanese culture is wrong and takes children a while to adjust.
Learned also shows this is unnatural and must be taught.
Kamikaze-
And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
Which had been the better way to die
Him never being accepted back cannot work with the previous lines; the death only lasted while his wife was alive
Kamikaze- context
Chronology of who is speaking is made complicated to show how complex culture can be and how beliefs can affect you
Those not alive/children during the war rebuild the country
Maybe a poem of hope?
Ozymandias- two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Juxtaposition- Vast implies greatness, while trunkless suggests incompleteness, undermining the power, and highlighting decay of power, and its ephemeral nature.
Irony- the legs are all that remain.
This reflects the Romantic themes of nature and time overwhelming human pride.
