English P1- The Explosion

Question 1

Elegy

Answer 1

Funeral poem

Question 2

Theme

Answer 2

Life and death
Morality
Whether there is life after death

Question 3

Ideas

Answer 3

Whether life should be happier for most people

Life on earth should be better for all

Question 4

Title

Answer 4

Tells us what has or will happen

Question 5

“Shadows”

Answer 5

Connotation is menacing

Suggesting something bad will happen in the pithead

Question 6

“pithead”

Answer 6

Entrance to a coal mine

Question 7

“oath-edged”

Answer 7

Swearing

Question 8

Stanza 1 and 2

Answer 8

Meet the miners on their way to work

Question 9

Stanza 3

Answer 9

Nature is perfect and beautiful

Question 10

“lark’s eggs”

Answer 10

Symbols of life and death, especially life, in the poem

Question 11

Lark

Answer 11

Songbird

Question 12

“Fathers brothers nicknames laughter”

Answer 12

Tight-knit community

No commas gives us a sense of close they are

Question 13

“Through the tall gates standing open.”

Answer 13

Represent the gates of decent into hell
Air of menace
Gates to the end of their lives
Hell is referred to a ‘the pit’

Question 14

“tremor”

Answer 14

Something bad has happened

Question 15

“cows/Stopped chewing for a second”

Answer 15

Startled
Impact on nature
As terrible as death is, it is merely a moment in life

Question 16

“sun/Scarfed as in a heat-hazed dimmed”

Answer 16

Dust blown out of the mine covers the sun

Question 17

Stanza 4

Answer 17

Subtle and quick
Doesn’t give us details
Alludes to the explosion

Question 18

“comfort”

Answer 18

Biblical image

Question 19

“We shall see them face to face”

Answer 19

One day we will be reunited in the afterlife

Question 20

“Larger than life”

Answer 20

Powerful and healthy

Question 21

“Gold as on coin”

Answer 21

Suggests how much better heaven is for them

Question 22

“One showing the eggs unbroken.”

Answer 22

Shows them whole again

Poignant (bitter-sweet)