Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin - Deaths and Engines Flashcards
Exploration of what elements of death
Our fear of it
It’s inevitability
The need to confront it
Dramatic, middle of action.
Registering individual pieces of information rather than understanding clearly what she is observing from the plane’s window.
Cold, impersonal, lonely imagery.
Contrast between burnt out plane and snow. - stark.
War zone like
“The back half of a plane, black
On the snow”
Sounds of echo = silence and sombre
“Tubular, burnt-out and frozen”
Tension through short and simple words.
Sense of whisper as if no one including the pilot dares to speak.
The passengers fear the worst and hope for the best.
The passengers become aware of the potential danger and how fragile life is.
Builds on sombre atmosphere
“No sound came over
The loudspeakers, except the sighs
Of the lonely pilot”
Past tense is gone (relationship between death and time)
For her father = soon you will grow wings and leave us.
She feels the need to ready herself for what is inevitable.
She wants to be equipped mentally and emotionally for death
“Soon you will need wings of your own’’
There comes a time in life when there is no escape from death.
Unlike when her father escaped death in ‘on lacking the killer instinct’
“Cornered”
Death is the moment where our lives and time finally intersect.
Time stops forever.
Death is a normal, sight like a knife and fork
“Time and life like a knife and fork
Cross”
Palm reading of the ‘breaking’ of the lifeline hinting at a fatalistic view of life - that we all have an inevitable destiny.
The run-on lines featuring these images of death suggest how quickly death approaches
“…the lifeline in your palm
Breaks”
Harsh logic that whatever lucky escapes we have, the time will come when there will be no escape and survival,.
Juxtaposition : dying man being cheerful, celebration of escaped death but it will come in the future.
Highlights the suffering associated with death of loved ones, but there is a bright side.
Hospital images are comforting as they represent survival.
“Images of relief ... A man with a bloody face Sitting up in bed, conversing cheerfully Through cut lips”
Imagery calls plane crash to mind again
Powerlessness, claustrophobia, panic, nightmarish.
Playing upon our fears.
Blind = lack of foresight, nobody knows what happens after we die
Reveal poet’s fears of her own fatality = realism
“You will find yourself alone
Accelerating down a blind
Alley, too late to stop”
Every piece of you is a different shape meaning death has a different impact on every loved one based on the relationship.
Overwhelming image of entire life’s worth of friendships that survive after death
A piece will live in their hearts after death
“… scattered like wreckage,
The pieces every one a different shape
will spin and lodge into the hearts
Of all who love you”
How does the poet not see death as natural or beautiful
The images of man made, metal things
