Giuseppe - Roderick Ford

Question 1

Title

Answer 1

• blunt term of address
• first home of the speaker’s uncle

Question 2

‘My Uncle Giuseppe told me that in Sicily in World War Two,’

Answer 2

embarking on a story, long lasting effects of the atrocity within the community showing the blame

Question 3

‘the only captive mermaid in the world was butchered on the dry and dusty ground
by a doctor, a fishmonger, and certain others.’

Answer 3

• illustrates confusion of what the mermaid is
• use of a list
• distressing, nobody prevented anything from happening

Question 4

‘She, it, had never learned to speak because she was simple, or so they’d said’

Answer 4

• change of pronoun is demonising
• speaker is increasingly sceptical about his uncles story

Question 5

‘she was only a fish, and fish can’t speak. But she screamed like a woman in terrible fear.’

Answer 5

• she wasn’t treated like a woman in their eyes
• simile provoked a shocking image

Question 6

‘this was proof she was just a fish and anyway an egg is not a child, but refused when some was offered to him.’

Answer 6

• the woman could have been pregnant
• ‘proof’ - men’s strategy to deny, using physical differences and mental incapacity for what they do

Question 7

‘and someone tried to take her wedding ring, but the others stopped him, and the ring stayed put.’

Answer 7

• mermaid crossed into the human world of love
• men were aware of the horror of their actions

Question 8

‘The rest they cooked and fed to the troops. They said a large fish had been found on the beach.’

Answer 8

• regimented
• line is isolated because it’s shocking
• could mirror the unemotive instructive nature of WW2

Question 9

‘Starvation forgives men many things,’

Answer 9

the story is still fabricated

Question 10

‘aquarium keeper’

Answer 10

Guiseppe was the one protecting the mermaid - shocking

Question 11

‘couldn’t look me in the eye, for which I thank God.’

Answer 11

• The narrator judges his uncle but feels the collective guilt, of the next generation
• ‘God’ - suggests how far protagonists moved from moral boundaries

Question 12

Overall messages

Answer 12

• dark ideas and suggestions running throughout which transgress typical human boundaries as a result of setting and situation
  -war forces these in human acts - striking, illustrating the brutality of warfare
• the men have power over the mermaid, male power over women

Question 13

Structure

Answer 13

• irregular narrative structure - story being remembered and retold
• enjambment and caesura creates pauses in the middle of phrases - reluctance in telling the story
• end-stopped stanzas giving an episodic story like feel