History Flashcards

1
Q

Unique structure

A
  • very erratic stanza lengths
  • could represent his dissalusionment and disjointed mental state
  • the fragmentation of the twin towers and thus his mental distress as a result of the attack
  • also creates an erratic and uncertain atmosphere, emphasises the emphatic theme of change as things in life are never certain and often shifting
  • grounded ONLY in the philosophical stanza at the bottom of p1 which is in perfect iambic pentameter, implying that looking that things from a philosophical context is grounding in a world where things are very rarely guaranteed
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2
Q

Title vs first line

A
  • the title and the date of the poem allude to the iconically infamous tragedy of the twin tower attacks, a likely long term historical horror
  • however the first line, emphatically placed only one Lexis on the line, grounds the poem in the present- implying that history is being made by the individual, present day experience. Subverting idea this poem would be in address of 9/11
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3
Q

Sand spinning off…
And that gasoline smell from leuchars

A
  • the sibilece mimics the wind and sets the poem in the natural world, this sense of nativity jars the unsettling epigraph connoting terror
  • however, the olfactory imagery of gasoline taking over natural space and the allusion to an RAF base imply that innocence and nature have been tainted by the horrors of the man made world
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4
Q

War places cambered and turned in morning light-

A
  • thelexis ‘war’ connotes human destruction and the imagery of planes flying allude obviously to the 9/11 terror attacks
  • thus this plus the notion of the places blocking out light (symbolic of peace and morality) imply that humanity are destroying peace and nature
  • antithesis to the innocence of the kite imagery in the opening stanza showing the corruption of the human brain by society
  • caesura shows a difficulty to wrench mind away from politics and danger
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5
Q

Caesura

A

-dashes used throigguhout to show the mans anxiety at keeping his mind free from anxiety about looming danger and politics
- put emphatic pressure on this worry through pauses
- could also be used to underscore the postmodern idea that the worlds history is a fluid, non linear process that affects all and is hence affected by all

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6
Q

Gathering shells and pebbles
All this driftwork

A
  • alludes to wreckage of the 9/11 attacks which implies that he is not really rooted in the present but is worrying about the publicised historical events of the era, ironic as now the natural world is tainted by fear
  • as it is followed by a very stabled iambic stanza, it can be argued that time with nature and looking at the reminence of the past is philosophically grounding as he is surrounded by tangible objects
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7
Q

I knelt down un the sand

A
  • comes after a section pondering anxiously the news and broken suddenly by caesura
  • implies submission and being overcome by anxiety
  • connotes submission perhaps to nature or the fact that his brain is submitting to the political issues
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8
Q

Property vs gravity and light

A
  • as humans we worry about futile things such as ownership
  • but these are transcended by nature and fluidity of time and earth showing how we should live in the present instead of being defined by events
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9
Q

Sometimes I am dizzy w fear paragraph

A
  • contrast of the emphatically placed beginning allusion of how humanity’s greed and abuse can destroy all
  • with the huge asyndetic listing of the great awe of the world and the overwhelming at its vastness
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10
Q

Drift and tug of other bodies
Scarcely apprehend..
Quiet, local forms of history

A
  • whilst human behaviour and the vastness of nature is vast and seen as important in separate ways
  • the author urges for people to live with the postmodern concept of history as being fluid, linear and importantly local to each individual
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11
Q

Toddler on the beach paragraph

A
  • stanza before refers to the fluid present day becoming quiet local history as it passes whilst not striving with human greed towards destruction and selfishness
  • huge antithesis between the two stanzas
  • the lexis ‘toddler’ connotes innocence and fragility, nativity to the horrors of society. Implying that this basic and naive appreciation for the world is what we should feel rather than greed and corruption as they represent mans primitive self
  • could be a temporal shift to the narrator as a child, showing how everyone has their own quiet local history and should learn to appreciate that
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