from the journal of a dissappinted man

Question 1

key themes

Answer 1

• gender roles
• traditional ideas of masculinity
• social change
• changing nature of British society

Question 2

“driving a new pile into the pier”

Answer 2

a pier is typically Victorian
- a pier acts as a bridge to nowhere, symbolic of the end of the industrial revoloution

Question 3

“paraphernalia”

“strong and silent”

Answer 3

CONTRAST between formal language vs simple language

Question 4

“massive”
“very poweful”
“ruminative”
“silent men”

Answer 4

description of workers
- traditional description of male identity
- symbolises Britain’s past and the country’s gradual decline

Question 5

“ignoring me”

Answer 5

speaker is an onlooker and observing the workers

Question 6

“these men were up against a great difficulty”

Answer 6

• glamorised ideal of the past as better but the past is being portrayed as a struggle and painful

Question 7

“I realised indifferent and tired, so tired of the whole buisness”

Answer 7

breakdown of traditional masculinity
- links to the ideas of the industrial revolution

Question 8

“for all he cared the pile could go on swinging until the crack of Doom”

Answer 8

• the setting symbolises the breakdown and failure of the British industries
• representing the lack of closure that these men get, they just have to stop what they have been doing their whole lives as the industry breaks down
• Doom = judgement day

Question 9

“one massive man after another abandoned his position”

Answer 9

• struggled and failed to complete their job

Question 10

“to gaze down like a mystic into the water”

Answer 10

simile
- workers are seeing an uncertain and unknown future
- a future where the traditional man and these values are not needed

Question 11

“with a heavy kind of majesty, he turned in his heel and walked away”

Answer 11

• positive imagery, regal and powerful aura

Question 12

“first in ones and twos, then altogether, the men followed. That left the pile still in mid-air, and me of course”

Answer 12

• the male industrial worker disappearing to history

Question 13

“That left the pile still in mid-air, and me of course”

Answer 13

• is the speaker metaphorically in mid air?
• uncertainty of the value of man
• lack of identity in a world where the traditional values of men have gone
• lack of a role or a purpose in life - strong workers have also lost their role/ identity

Question 14

symbolic messages of the poem

Answer 14

• crisis of male identity, loss of industry roles
• crisis of Britain’s identity - loss of industrial power