Look we have coming to Dover! - Daljit Nagra

Question 1

Title

Answer 1

• grammatical error - immigrants, imperfect English
• satirical and play into the English stereotypical Indian voice and be evocative of the optimism we expect when people come to our country

Question 2

‘So various, so beautiful, so new…’ Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’

Answer 2

• glorifying the cliffs, Nagra turns this the other way criticising the welcome of immigrants
• intertextuality

Question 3

‘Stowed in the sea to invade the lash alfresco of a diesel-breeze’

Answer 3

• hidden illegal immigrants
• military reference them ‘taking jobs’
• cultural diversity ‘alfresco’

Question 4

‘brunt with gobfuls of surf phlegmed by cushy come-and-go tourists prow’d on the cruisers, lording the ministered waves.’

Answer 4

• colloquialism
• juxtaposition between tourists and immigrants
• superiority - room for tourists but not immigrants

Question 5

‘seagull and shoal life’

Answer 5

sibilance - represents the sea

Question 6

‘blarnies’

Answer 6

different cultural influences from the colloquialism

Question 7

‘scummed’

Answer 7

social stereotype

Question 8

‘thunder unbladders yobbish rain and wind on our escape hutched in a Bedford van.’

Answer 8

• pathetic fallacy
• that the personification of nature isn’t welcoming them
• ‘yobbish’ - British centric phrase, influence of English language

Question 9

‘unclocked by the national eye or stab in the back, teemed for breathing’

Answer 9

• scrutinising for existing
• being hidden from the government
• discrimination

Question 10

‘burdened, ennobled - poling sparks across pylon and pylon.’

Answer 10

• an allusion to ‘white man burden’ - reflects the hardship of having to educate the Indigenous people in British colonisation

Question 11

‘Swarms of us, grafting in the black within shot of the moon’s spotlight, banking on the miracle of sun -‘

Answer 11

• danger in masses - tabloid language
• trying to live illegally without being spotted
• limited success rate

Question 12

‘Only then can it be human to hoick ourselves, bare-faced for the clear.’

Answer 12

• immigrants have to hide themselves away, until acceptance is gained

Question 13

‘Imagine my love and I, our sundry others, Blair’d in the cash’

Answer 13

• In reference to Tony Blair, they have assimilated in British culture

Question 14

‘beeswax’d cars’

Answer 14

represent journey, growth the people have made it

Question 15

‘charged glasses over unparasol’d tables East, babbling our lingoes, flecked by the chalk of Britannia!’

Answer 15

• though they have assimilated to British culture, this will never be their home
  ‘unparasol’d - metaphor, for not needing to hide anymore, finally accepted

Question 16

Overall messages

Answer 16

• the poem deals with the hardship of assimilating into a country that isn’t your own
• this poem breaks down the so-called ‘national welcome’ that we are so proud of in British culture

Question 17

Structure

Answer 17

• regular structure - 5 stanzas with 5 lines
• no consistent rhyme - symbolistic of the masses of people and how there is limited order
• half-rhyme - the speaker is trying to speak the language
• shorter sentences at the top and longer ones at the bottom imitating waves and progress