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Question 1

(LP) themes

Answer 1

• attitudes to conflict
• survival
• futility
• remembrance

Question 2

(LP) author background (Carol Ann Duffy)

Answer 2

• didn’t go to war
• wrote the war for deceased veterans of WWI
• is anti-war

Question 3

(LP) Structure

Answer 3

• poem doesn’t fully rhyme - Duffy cannot fully change what happened to the soldiers
• the story of the war is told backwards
• enjambment in stanza 3 - emphasising the amount of possibilities if the war didn’t happen
• juxtaposition between the preface and first stanza - demonstrating how Duffy sees war different to Owen who was there

Question 4

(LP) “in all my dreams (…)”

Answer 4

Intertextual reference to Dulce et Decorum Est

The speaker looks through the angle of Wilfred Owen - regretful about war & suffering

Question 5

(LP) “If poetry could tell it backwards”

Answer 5

Conjunction and regretful tone

The speaker looks to see an alternative

Also, very similar to the second last line “truely tell it”- creating cyclical structure

The speaker recognises the alternative can only exist in poetry

Question 6

(LP) “shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud …”

Answer 6

Sibilance and Caesura

Reinforces the horrific deaths the men endured

Also pace slows and the events now rewind, war is reversed

Question 7

(LP) “mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers”

Answer 7

sibilance and list

Emphasises firstly the relief of the soldiers - able to return to normality

Secondly the effect of their death on loved ones

Question 8

(LP) “to die and die and die”

Answer 8

Repetition

Emphasises the mindlessness of the suffering and slaughter

Question 9

(LP) “You walk away” (stanzas 1 & 2)

Answer 9

repetition and tone of defiance

Illustrates how the soldiers abandon patriotism

Question 10

(LP) “(…) and light a cigarette”

Answer 10

sociable image

The soldiers can now enjoy each other’s company instead of dying together

Question 11

(LP) “shaking dried mud from their hair”

Answer 11

symbolism

The soldiers remove the remnants of conflict from their consciousness

Question 12

(LP) “released from History”

Answer 12

personification

Illustrates how the men were trapped by WWI, now they are free to make their own history

Question 13

(LP) “truely tell”

Answer 13

alliteration

The speaker wishes such a tragedy never happened

This makes the tone regretful