In the Round Tower at Jhansi Flashcards
Hundred
‘A hundred, a thousand to one….The swarming howling wretched below Gained and gained and gained’
The first line, with the vague hyperbole exaggerating the sense of being outnumbered, unites the reader with the character’s in the poem, evoking sympathy for them. The animalistic imagery creates the idea of the couple being hunted down, and the character of ‘Skene’, based on Captain Skene, commonly known to the British, would have further drawn out sympathy, and even anger at a powerful, authoritative figure being unfairly preyed on. The enjambment between the last two lines of the first stanza indicate the destructive force as powerful and unrelentless, with the repetition of ‘gained’ and syndetic ‘and’ suggesting a merciless attack. The ‘abab’ rhyme scheme further enables a fast pace to be created, mimicking the events described, and suggesting that the couple are running out of time.
Kiss
‘Young, strong and so full of life’
‘Kiss and kiss…thus to kiss and die’
The description of the couple uses the triad to emphasize what will be lost - the bitter tone created shows this loss to be wrong, the death juxtaposing with the characters ‘so full of life’, as if they deserve to live - the helplessness almost adds to the romantic imagery, and the later unattributed dialogue makes it unclear who says what, uniting the couple as one powerful force that death attempts to break apart. The caesura’s used throughout and the internal repetition indicate the couple attempting to prolong death.
Close
‘Close his arm about he now, close her cheek to his, close the pistol to her brow - God forgive them this!’
The anaphora of ‘close’ reinforces the idea of prolonging death by creating a sense of time slowing down - the first two phrases are intimate, but juxtapose with the brutality of the last phrase showing how their love will end in pain - this may be a condemnation of war, by showing how it affects love. Bringing up God shows the struggle in their decision to kill themselves, a clear awareness that this is considered a sin in Christianity, and yet their choice to go through represents the lack in faith that was common of the Victorian period. The era was filled with an uncertainty of death, a clear obsession that influences the poem.
