ED-To Know

Question 1

No quote (poetic form)

Heroic quatrains + initiation of anaphoric enquiry

Answer 1

→establishes expect. traditional elegy (painful death →blissful resurrec.) / tone mournful questioning = sp. mourning intimate friend or lover, most likely CW soldier, wishing ‘to know’ if died death of X’n dignity

Question 2

‘to know if any human eyes were near’ + ‘wavering gaze’ + ‘settled broad on paradise’

Synecdoche (“eyes”)Contrast b/w “wavering” + “settled”

Answer 2

→synecdoche = sp’s wish for attendants (PGD)
→adj ‘wavering’ evokes extreme vuln. dying man’s death throes, contrast w. verb ‘settled’ on ‘paradise’ (soul soon to be granted redemption + restfulness in Heaven)

Question 3

‘patient –part content –‘

Adjectives (or just diction)

Answer 3

→adjs = Sp. wish know soldier = accept death calmly (→election, PGD)

Question 4

‘did the sunshine face his way’

Simple, uncomplicated syntax (word order) + diction (language)

Answer 4

→Simple syntax + diction = sp’s wish soldier received simple comforts ∴S1&2 predictable metre reflects sent’lity convent. elegy (afterlife = ultimate consolation) + reveals sp (+ possibly D’son) keenly engaged w. beliefs of PGD

Question 5

‘His furthest mind –Of home –or God –‘ + ‘What the distant say’

Breakdown of heroic quatrains / additional line Parallelism + caesura and dash

Answer 5

→metrical shift = D’son prob’zing assump heaven only source consolation / multiple foreshortened lines may replicate imperfect rhythms mortality + genuineness sp’s grief
→loss of ‘home’ elevated to same status as contemplation of Heaven
→soldier contemplates legacy in the mortal world, not just resurrect.

Question 6

‘Just his sigh –accented –had been legible -to me -’

synaesthesia

Answer 6

→Imply privileged r’ship btw sp+ soldier / only sp has the unique sensory capacity to discern soldier’s final wish

Question 7

‘afraid –or tranquil’

Adjectives

Answer 7

→Sp. still interested PGD (wishes soul to be ‘tranquil’)

Question 8

‘How conscious consciousness could grow’

Near identical repetition

Answer 8

→2X readings: dying man has revelation of God b4 death AND/OR awareness of death intensifies our humanity (our ultimate vulnerability makes life’s ephemeral r’ships precious)

Question 9

‘Til love that was –and love too best to be -’

Past tense + hyperbole

Answer 9

→stresses twin loves: one of the mortal world that must be left behind (past tense) –the other the perfection of God’s redemption (hyperbole)