An easy passage - Julia Copus

Question 1

Title

Answer 1

Irony - the transition into adulthood is difficult, child-like wonder has over estimated the ease

Question 2

‘Once she is halfway up there, crouched in her bikini on the porch roof of her family’s house, trembling,’

Answer 2

• in media res ‘once’
• sense of hesitation from long sentences
• continuous thoughts
• verbs - protecting herself, unable to hide her sense of dread

Question 3

narrow windowsill, the sharp drop of the stairwell;

Answer 3

• becoming a woman is challenging her - comments on the pressure in society

Question 4

‘flimsy, hole-punched, aluminium lever’

Answer 4

• no support offered
• fit into an unrealistic standard
• passage is dangerous, unreliable

Question 5

‘warm flank of the house’

Answer 5

• house acts as a metaphor for childhood, seeks comfort and aid - like a hug

Question 6

‘a square of petrified beach’

Answer 6

• an expansive place of isolation
• shape jars the fluidity of the poem
• symbolism of not fitting in

Question 7

‘what can she know
of the way the world admits us less and less
the more we grow?’

Answer 7

• internal rhythm - suggests a cycle
• rhetorical question - direct address

Question 8

‘gold stud
earrings in the first one’s ears; for now the house exists
only for them, set back as it is from the long, grey eye of the street’

Answer 8

• controlling descriptions between girls with the world they enter
• metaphor - the world she is to enter a dark everyday life

Question 9

‘far too, most far, from the flush-faced secretary who, with her head full of the evening class she plans to take, or the trip of a lifetime, looks up now from the stirring omens of the astrology column at a girl – thirteen if she’s a day’

Answer 9

• ‘flush-faced’ - fricative alliteration - symbolism of the metaphor
• ‘far’ - repetition - fear and envy from secretary
• ‘plans’ - noun phrase - never gets round to doing them, unable to better herself; idiom, no individuality, what everyone else desires to do too.
• symbolism - believes in fate and the stars as her life is lacklustre
• considered unlucky - the girls must do the right thing

Question 10

‘shielding her eyes’

Answer 10

metaphorically shielding herself from the dazzle of an uncertain future, adulthood is vivid and bright, filled with wonder but uncertainty

Question 11

‘a silver anklet’

Answer 11

• silver - symbolistic of feminine institution
• connotations to slavery and imprisonment being enclosed with gender roles and expectations

Question 12

‘flash of armaments before’

Answer 12

• will not allow her life to be determined by gender - positive tone
• metaphor - what burdens her is a weapon

Question 13

‘dropping gracefulling into the shade of the house’

Answer 13

• protects and shields her - a metaphor for how women help each other
• adverbial phrase - girls have grown up, has the weapon needed to face adulthood, has passed the point of no return

Question 14

Overall messages

Answer 14

• an extended metaphor
• contrast between an innocent and naive, young girl and an older woman who works as a secretary
• main concern is the exploration of the fleeting period between girlhood and womanhood

Question 15

Structure

Answer 15

• free verse in one single stanza. sense of fluidity and movement, life is continuous, keep moving
• line lengths generally similar
• the poem, on the page, appears daunting and challenging, much like the transition, air of uncertainty, overwhelmed