Aunt Julia Flashcards
What are the main themes of Aunt Julia?
Isolation.
Loss.
Painful experiences.
S1 - “Gaelic very loud and very fast”
Word choice and repetition.
MacCaig cannot speak Gaelic and the way his aunt speaks makes it even more difficult for him to understand.
Introduces frustration at barriers in communication with her.
S1 - “very”
Word choice.
Everything fast paced, intense, full of life and energy.
S1 - “I could not…I could not…”
Repetition.
Entirely unable to communicate and he is becoming frustrated because of it.
S2 - “marvellously”
Word choice.
His incredulity at what she does and admiration for what she does.
S3 - “only house”
“only” emphasises how exciting/special it was to visit her.
S3 - “I’ve lain at night in the absolute darkness of a box bed”
Alliteration - conveys a sense of fun.
Captures intensity of childhood experience, strangeness of unique location.
S4 - “She was buckets and water flouncing into them”
Metaphor.
Julia is an elemental force.
She’s linked to traditional hard work of croft.
S4 - “flouncing”
Word choice.
Movement, speed and attitude - anger and annoyance.
Gives a description of the deliberate, vigorous way she moved.
S4 - “and a keeper of threepenny bits in a teapot”
Suggests individuality, quirkiness, eccentricity and thriftiness.
S5 - “Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic very loud and very fast”
Repeating opening lines of the poem.
Darker tine enters the poem at this point.
By the time MacCaig had learned a little Gaelic, his aunt was dead, lying silenced in her grave.
Returns to idea of inability to understand one another.
S5 - “she lay silenced in the absolute black of a sandy grave”
Contrast between loud, talkative, vibrant Aunt Julia in life and the utter, absolute quiet of death.
S5 - “absolute black”
Sinister, unsettling tone.
He’s blaming death for suffocating and stopping her voice.
S5 - “and getting angry, getting angry with so many questions”
Poet imagines her and her building frustration at her questions not being answered, at being misunderstood.
S5 - “questions”
Word choice.
Her questions which he was unable to understand and unable to answer because he had no Gaelic.
All questions he would have loved to ask but was unable to until it was too late.
More universal queries we all have about meaning and mysteries of life itself.
