kamikaze Flashcards
‘her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword’
possessive pronouns: ‘her father’
↳ humanises
verb: embarked:
↳ to get on a boat
↳ to start something (foreshadows how is about to begin something rather than end his life)
double entendre: ‘sunrise’
↳ japan
↳ beginning of the day
↳ sun sustains life
‘flask of water’
↳ hydration is key to life
‘samurai sword’
↳ death
↳ reminder of shame if they return (suppuku)/reminder of honour (bushido)
juxtaposition: ‘water’, ‘samurai sword’
↳ death vs life, foreshadows inner conflict of pilot
‘a shaven head full of powerful incantations’
‘shaven head’
↳ lost identity, dehumanisation
‘powerful incantations’
↳ brainwashing, patriotism & propaganda
‘the little fishing boats strung out like bunting on a green-blue translucent sea’
(fishing is important in japanese society therefore he feels homesick)
irony: ‘little fishing boats’
↳ he should be looking for large warships
↳ foreshadows his reluctance to die
simile: ‘like bunting’
↳ the suicide of these soldiers is treated like it’s a celebration (juxtaposition)
↳ he sees the beauty of his home & life as well as simple things in life and sees them as joyful & a celebration, this begins his inner conflict
‘green-blue’
↳ green symbolises growth & nature, blue symbolises stability & responsibility
‘like a huge flag waved … in a figure of eight’
simile: ‘like a huge flag’
↳ patriotism & obligation, he is so brainwashed that he sees signs to follow his instructions everywhere
↳ surrender (has he made up his mind)
‘in a figure of eight’
↳ infinity (limitless & continuous)
↳ nature is everlasting while war is futile & will end
↳ the cycle of death is continuous for kamikaze pilots
↳ his thoughts aren’t straightforward but go round and round due to his inner conflict
↳ his decision will have an everlasting impact on his life
semantic field of value:
‘shoals of fishes flashing silver’
‘pear-grey pebbles’
‘silver of whitebait’
adjectives: ‘silver, pearl, silver’
↳ the pilot sees value in all things in life, even monotonous things such as pebbles, he even sees white/translucent fish as silver
↳ this shows how the pilot is beginning to see nature in life as too valuable to let go of through dying
‘and once, a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.’
metaphor:
↳ symbolises the pilot as his individualism is a threat to japan’s regime and is a danger to the authority of the emperor
↳ while catching a tuna in fishing is extremely beneficial as it can feed many, the pilot’s death is similarly beneficial to the japanese
↳ the tuna serves as a reminder of death for the pilot, and tells him to think back to whether he would like to die or not
end-stopped line
↳ one of only two full stops (finality) he has finally made his decision of life
‘they treated him
as though he no longer existed…
this was no longer the father we loved.’
irony:
↳ although the pilot saved his own life, he no longer is alive to those close to him as he has embarrassed them
↳ he is ostracised & discriminated due to having broken away from the brainwashing
end stopped line:
↳ finality, the children where forced to follow the cultural norms
pronoun: ‘this’
↳ establishes a distance between the daughter and her father
‘and sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
which had been the better way to die.’
modal verb: ‘must’
↳ the daughter feels curious about the motives of her father but cannot ask him as she has learned to be silent
↳ she seems remourseful
-garland selects the word “die” as the last word of the poem, which creates a sense of inevitable fate: the soldier was destined to die one way or another
-though the pilot avoided physical death, he now faces metaphorical/spiritual death
context:
-in WWII, japanese kamikaze pilots flew manned suicide missions into military targets using planes filled with explosives
-soldiers and pilots were taught it was the only way to change the direction of the war (japan losing), and they had to take part in this last resort
-if you shamed your family, you’d have to do seppuku to restore your families honour
form:
-narrative poem
-sections of the poem are in italics as first-person narrative, where the storyteller speaks directly for herself
↳ this heightens the sense of sadness she feels
structure:
seven, six-line stanzas
↳ represent order and obedience
free verse & enjambment
↳ juxtapose the strict six line stanzas to represent how the pilot wishes to be an individual & oppose his mission
↳ no full stop till the 5th stanza, represent his quick & frenzied decision as he allows his thoughts to flow freely
only the sentences:
-the first details his journey & what he sees
first sentence of kamikaze:
-runs over five stanzas, as we are told about what the pilot can see from the cockpit
-the first five stanzas have a flowing unstoppability, like the train of thought that takes the character of the pilot from the fishing boats to the sea, to the fish and on to his memories
-there is something inevitable and unstoppable about his choice for life instead of death
second sentence of kamikaze:
-the second marks a shift in time and in speaker
-the reader is suddenly brought close to someone with a direct interest in the story she tell
-the reader learns the kamikaze pilot abandoned his mission and turned back
-placing this information at the point where the poem has a shift in time and speaker, gives the information more impact
third sentence of kamikaze:
-only three lines
-reverts to third person
-emphasising the fact that the pilot may have thought he would’ve been better off if he had died in the suicide mission
-each change in speaker and each shift in time has a jarring and unsettling effect on the reader and perhaps expresses the turbulent, but repressed feelings of the daughter
who wrote kamikaze?
beatrice garland
