An Easy Passage.

Question 1

Why does An Easy Passage begin ‘Once…’

Answer 1

Once implies the singular and profound nature of this experience, as well as evoking a fairytale, which again suggests this is an important stage in the young girl’s ‘story’

Question 2

In An Easy Passage, why does the poet refer to the girl being ‘halfway up there’, as well as referring to the friend ‘with whom she is half in love’?

Answer 2

Repeated phrasing suggests ideas of transition – suggests that the girl is ‘halfway’ between childhood and adulthood ​

Question 3

In An Easy Passage why does the poet describe the girl ‘trembling’, as well as describing the ‘sharp drop of the stairwell’?

Answer 3

To suggest that this this transitional stage (from childhood to adulthood) is full of both possibility and risk.

Question 4

In An Easy Passage, what is the significance of these lines:
‘What can she know​ of the way the world admits us less and less​ the more we grow?’

Answer 4

The narrator’s rhetorical question suggests that the girl can never understand that, as we become adults, the world feels more closed.

Question 5

What technique is used here - ‘For now, both girls seem lit as if from within’ (An Easy Passage)

Answer 5

simile

Question 6

How are the two girls in An Easy Passage presented when the speaker describes them as both being ‘lit as if from within’?

Answer 6

This simile conveys that the girls are defined by vibrancy and optimism.

Question 7

In An Easy Passage, why does the speaker describe that ‘FOR NOW both girls seem lit as if from within’, and ‘FOR NOW the long, grey​ eye of the street [is] far away’?

Answer 7

To suggest that the girls’ sense of vibrancy and freedom cannot last forever.

Question 8

What is the effect of the colour imagery used in An Easy Passage - ‘the gold stud earring’/the silver anklet’/’the shimmering​ oyster-painted toenails’

Answer 8

The colour imagery is intended to convey the preciousness of the girls’ youthful optimism and freedom.

Question 9

In An Easy Passage, what does the ‘drab electroplating factory’ metaphorically represent?

Answer 9

The dullness and routine of the adult world.

Question 10

What does the ‘flush faced secretary’ in An Easy Passage represent?

Answer 10

The stresses and intensity of the adult world.

Question 11

An Easy Passage ends with the girl ‘dropping gracefully into the shade of the house’ - how is this significant?

Answer 11

The ‘shade’ offered by the house suggests that, for now, she still needs the protection and security of the adult world.