Belonging Anthology Quotations Language Techniques Flashcards
The Émigrée; metaphor creating a positive image of her home country - 1st stanza
‘my memory of it is sunset clear’
The Émigrée; juxtaposition as she contrasts positive connotations of sunlight with negative conotations of being branded - 1st stanza
‘I am branded by an impression of sunlight.’
The Émigrée; synathesia (blur between taste and vision) that her home country is so dear to her she can taste its sweetness - 2nd stanza
‘I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.’
The Émigrée; juxtaposition as she contrasts dark with light to show her coming to terms with having two identities - 3rd stanza (last line of poem)
‘My shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.’
Jamaican British; juxtaposition of two identities using asyndetic listing with tricolon to emphasise stereotypes made against him, that he can only be one ethnicity or the other; but he repeats ‘Jamaican British’ to establish his dual heritage - 3rd stanza
‘Half-caste, half mule, house slave - Jamaican British’
‘Light skin, straight male, privileged - Jamaican British’
Jamaican British; juxtaposition to display confusion between identity and belonging within a group of people - 4th to 5th stanzas
‘they enslaved us.’
‘I hate dem, all dem Jamaicans -‘
Jamaican British; repetitive ‘c’ sound - consonance used to allow flow of rhythm of the ghazal as it is a spoken poem; family used positively to show belonging in family - 7th stanza
‘Cousins in Kingston call me Jah-English, proud’
Jamaican British; rhetorical question to allow reader to reflect on his struggle within his identity as he feels belonging to neither one nor another community as they have out dating history of war between them - uses war between two countries (macro) to emphasise war inside of him (micro); enjambment used to emphasise confusion - 8th stanza
‘how do I serve
Jamaican British?’
