Originally Flashcards
We came
Plural pronoun. In the past tense. Collective experience of the family
Our own country
Ownership and sense of belonging
Red room
Everything they own is In car
Metaphor for car
Child like impression
Red implies danger and anxiety
Fell through the fields
No control overwhelming
Our fathers name
Ambiguous
Praying?
missing?
Bawling
Hysterical. Conveys strength of misery and feeling of loss. Brother wasn’t ready to move.
Home
Enjambment and list
Repetition conveys how stressed and uncertain they were
Didn’t live anymore.
Caesura
Abrupt sudden final
how much has been left behind.
acceptance from duffy
Eyes of a blind toy
Cant see what’s ahead of you
Fear of unknown. Universal idea
Holding its paw
Quiet and withdrawn looking for comfort
feeling sorry for itself
all childhood is an emigration
Metaphor
Idea of a journey/different changes+ stages of life
Some are slow
Leaving you standing,resigned, up an avenue
Where no one you know stays. others are sudden.
Long sentences reflect how long these changes can seem
Short sentence reveals abruptness that comes with change
Your accent wrong.
Short sentence
How can you communicate with the wrong accent
Abruptness that comes with change
Seem
inability to negotiate her way successfully with Sense of confusion and uncertainty
Big boys eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand
Strange and aggressive behaviour reveals intimidation
her sense of confusion as she is confronted by behaviour and language that is alien to her.
My parents anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
Simile
Conveys something that’s annoying in the background that can’t be ignored
Enjambment reflects anxiety over move
I want our own country
Italics indicate speech- reflects beginning
reference back to the first line of stanza one
Suggests that it may have been
constantly repeated during this upsetting transition
But then you forget
Contrast in feeling
Change in tone settled in and adapted to new environment
Or don’t recall, or change,
list emphasised change can be difficult
Swallow a slug
Brother has adapted to the new environment
fully assimilated into his new home, with the simple alliteration indicating that this was a straightforward process for him
A skelf of Shame
Metaphor
Use of Scottish dialect feels attached to the Scottish roots and doesn’t want to let them go
She still feels out of place
Shedding of its skin like a snake
Talking about her tongue
Unconscious outcome didn’t mean to change
Lost her accent without realising
Do I only think
I lost a river,culture speech,sense of first space
And the right place?
Lists of all the things she’s lost
She still doesn’t know the answer to her question even though she is at the end of the poem
Now,where do you come from?
Questioning out won sense of identity and belonging
Originally? And I hesstate
Is where we come from truly our home
hesitation reveals that even though she is older, the speaker continues to have mixed feeling about her true origins.
