Guiseppe Flashcards
Structure
-Free verse without rhyme or meter - makes the poem feel more like a nightmare.
- Dramatic monologue - begins with ‘my uncle’ ends with ‘aquarium keeper,’ shows loss of respect.
- Enjambment - breaks up the brutal actions of the men with the attempted justification of whats been done. Also creates a steady, sinister pace.
- Longest middle stanza reflects their moral conflict.
- Setting - dream-version of Italy - Sicily in WW2 was overrun and the first fascist (dictatorial e.g. hitler) government was toppled -> the mermaid’s murderers have to dehumanise her to do what they do just as the fascists who murdered millions of people during WW2 did to their victims.
Ford
Giuseppe or Geppetto (an Italian variant of the name) is the poor woodcarver in the Italian story Pinocchio – a story about a wooden puppet who is brought to life and yearns to be treated like a “real boy”.
It is also an Italian variant of the biblical name ‘Joseph.
Ford looks on a character undergoing a surreal encounter, using dreamlike images to explore memories fantasies, and human nature - revealing that this isn’t just about WW2 but atrocities can happen wherever and whenever, the first step to murder is convincing yourself your victim isn’t a person.
Context
Draws on grim history of WW2, set in the fascist dictator Mussolini’s Italy. The mermaid might be read as a symbol of all the people whom the Nazis and their allies dehumanised and murdered during WW2 - the ‘undesirables.’ Just as the men did, the fascists of the WW2 era represented the Jewish people as subhuman, fascist propaganda justified mass murder by depicting Jewish people as rats, mice, and cockroaches. Even in the Italian story ‘Pinocchio’ (which is where Guiseppe’s name is derived from) hints at the anti-semitic stereotype that places Jews as liars and racially profiles them with ‘big, long’ noses.
‘She, it, had never learned to speak because she was simple, or so they’d said.’
- ‘She, it’ - immediately reveals dehumanisation, showing how the mermaid is stripped of her identity and reduced to an object or animal - revises the pronoun to try to make himself feel less like what he did was murder.
- Unreliable justification - the speaker distances himself from responsibility by attributing the idea to others, reflecting how people justify atrocities through collective belief systems -> parallels historical atrocities and links to psychological theories of moral disengagement (ethical standards do not apply to him)
‘In Siciliy in WW2..’
- Specific historical setting immediately links the poem to wartime atrocities, Sicily, was a place of both military and civilian suffering, though, here it is ironically put in a beautiful light (bougainvillea = vibrant flowering plant, symbolises life, warmth and Mediterranean beauty, creating juxtaposition with the execution of the mermaid) - showing censorship and how fascist regimes attempted to cover up their atrocities; the secluded courtyard even suggests secrecy
- Repetition of ‘in’ - list-like rhythm, emphasises how events are being recorded, recalled and located in history - mimics how war crimes are retold as cold, factual accounts, detached from emotion
‘The priest who held one of her hands while she was butchered..’
- Contrasts with the story of Joseph - the moral story of which is to have faith in God as He has a plan. Here, the priest, who is considered to have a deep, personal relationship with God and act in his will, acts against it, interfering with God’s plan and acting against the 10 Commandments.
- Priests presence should symbolise compassion, protection or last rites, but instead, it highlights moral corruption and religious complicity in violence
- The irony between ‘holding her hand’ as a humanising gesture and ‘butchered’ as a violent, dehumanising verb that likens the execution to slaughtering an animal, shows the hypocrisy of religious figures justifying inhumane actions.
- Rationalisation of violence in that she was ‘only a fish, can’t speak’ echoes historical justifications for atrocities - shows how language is used to erase identity and moral worth, making it easier to commit violence.
