material Flashcards
What is the AO2? ‘My mother was the hanky queen’
Metaphor - speaker’s mother is loved and admired, but also down to earth.
How are the past and the present juxtaposed in the first stanza of Material?
‘not paper tissues bought in packs, from late night garages and shops’ - present is presented as convenient but generic and lacking value
‘things for waving out of trains and mopping the corners of your grief’ - past is depicted as meaningful and rich in emotion
‘spittled and…[Material]
…scrubbed against my face’
What is the AO2? ‘spittled and scrubbed against my face.’
Sibilance presents the mother as offering a ‘hands on’ practical form of love.
What quotations present the past as not without hardships?
‘naffest Christmas gifts you’d get’, ‘demanded irons and boiling to be purified’ - whilst the speaker does romanticise the past, there is also a sense of ambivalence at times, it was not without disappointment and hard work.
What quotations present the last as more meaningful?
‘George with his dodgy foot’, ‘the friendly butcher who’d slip an extra sausage in’, ‘where Mrs White, with painted talons, taught us When You’re Smiling’ - conveys a tight-knit, caring community, contrasts the polished and sanitised nature of the present with the past, which is charming in its imperfections.
What is significant about when the speaker looks back at the past?
The use of enjambment and lack of regular rhyme scheme shows how the speaker becomes immersed in vivid memories.
What is the AO2? ‘Nostalgia only makes me old.’
Looking back and living in the past separates her from the present.
How is the modern world presented towards the end of the poem?
The modern world is characterised as easy, but generic and lacking individuality - ‘killed in TV lassitude’, ‘eat bought biscuits I would bake if i’d commit to being home’
Where is the volta of the poem?
‘But it isn’t mine. I’ll let it go.’ - Caesura represents the separation of the two worlds, ‘it’ is deliberately ambiguous, speaker begins to reach a resolution.
How does the narrative voice change towards the end of the poem?
‘this is your material to do with, daughter, what you will.’ - narrative voice switches as speaker addresses her mother, the speaker must use material to make her own life, but there is always a connection to the past.
