Chainsaw Versus The Pampas Grass Flashcards
“It seemed an unlikely match”
- False determination creates an element of uncertainty
“Grinding its teeth”
- Personification emphasises anger and emotion
“Swung nose-down”
- Violent Imagery : suppression of anger
- Enjambment : emphasises movement as uncontainable
“Knocked back a quarter-pint of engine oil”
- Personification of Chainsaw : emphasises loutish and rough demeanour
- Colloquial use of stereotypical, outdated masculine language
“Juices ran from its joints and threads, oozed”
- Pun : adrenaline seeping out, emphasises uncontrollable nature
- Personification of human anatomy (physicality)
- Excessive nature of violence and energy
“Weightless wreckage of wasps and flies mothballed in spider’s wool…”
- Alliteration emphasises the animalistic imagery : sense of abandonment
- Ellipsis : build up of tension
“Like powder from a keg”
- Simile emphasises the violent, explosive nature
- Emphasises build up of anticipation
- Forceful / extremity in nature
“Then walked” / “Then walked again”
- Syntactic parallelism : emphasises monotonous task and the futility
- Repetitive nature is ritualistic
“Gunned the trigger”
- Hyperbole : over-violent and excessive
STANZA 2
- Repetitive / cyclical nature emphasises the excessive verbosity of violence
- Listing of events undermines the meaning of the action - monotonous
“Just an instant rage”
- Personification of short clause reflects the violence : impulsiveness and brute force
- Instantaneous burst of emotion : bestial, primitive
“The rush of metal lashing out at air”
- Personification of violent imagery emphasises a lack of control
- Futile as it is unprovoked and ineffectual against the air
“To tangle with cloth, or jewellery, or hair.”
- Polysyndetic Listing : stereotypes of women emphasising masculinity v femininity
“It’s bloody desire, it sweet tooth”
- Anaphoric Repetition : emphasises gluttonous desire - sinful / violent
“And felt the hundred beats per second drumming in it’s heart” / “and felt the drive-wheel gargle in its throat”
- Anaphoric repetition : symbolises adrenaline for violence
- Personification builds up tension, fast paced
- Violence is intrinsic
“The pampas grass with its ludicrous feathers”
- Hyperbole : mocking and silly emphasising pejorative and judgemental nature
- Motif of elegance : flamboyant / diva
STRUCTURE : reduced description in comparison to chainsaw emphasising inferior nature
“Sunning itself, Stealing the show with it’s footstools, cushions and tufts and its twelve-foot spears”
- Polysyndetic Listing : emphasises ordinary everyday items, creates irony
- Element of grandiose
- Jealous undertone
“Sledgehammer taken to crack the nut” / “Overkill”
- Verbose use of force : overkill
“Or a pitchfork to lever it out at its base”
- Motif of masculinity : empty male violence is excessive and unnecessary
- Comical effect - cartoonish nature
“Swooned”
- Stereotypes of women : presented as overly emotional
- Element of distress for men
“This was a game”
- Sadistic enjoyment of destruction
“Carved” / “Spat” / “Ripped into pockets of dark, secret warmth”
- Motif of violence
- Phallic imagery : potentially symbolic of rape and abusive against women
- Emphasises the over-excessive violence, intrusive and exploitation
“Severed or felled or torn”
- Polysyndetic listing : emphasises violent imagery and excessive violence
“Like cutting at water or air with a knife”
- Simile : emphasises the force of nature - damage is ineffective and pointless
- Parallels earlier in poem - pointlessness of violence
“In the weeks that came new shoots like asparagus tips sprang up from its nest”
- Simile : comedic / ironic - emphasises the power and strength of nature. Power of women
“Corn in Egypt”
- Allusion - promise to resolve famine. Speaker is the villain.
“I looked on from the upstairs window like the midday moon”
- Simile : detachment / hopelessness
- Final attempt at asserting superiority emphasises out of sync nature of speaker denial
- Sense of loss
“Back below the stairs on its hook the chainsaw seethed”
- Cyclical nature of poem : goes back to its place of origin emphasising futile nature of the act
- Personification : extremity of rage, sense of injustice
- Contrasts height of the grass, now inferior to it
“Man-made dreams”
- Direct reference to masculinity emphasising masculine violence being taught. Anger/frustration. Dreams being ineffective and pointless
“Seamless urge to persist was as far as it got”
- Motif of violence : critical of masculine violence = futile and unfulfilled
- STRUCTURE : smaller sentences emphasise withering and diminishment of chainsaw (inferior)
