Penguin on the Beach

Question 1

Stranger in his own element,

Answer 1

• othered by the oil

Question 2

Sea-casualty, the castaway manikin

Answer 2

• excluded from his own environment
• diminutive
• rendered helpless and vulnerable

Question 3

Waddles in his tailored coat-tails. Oil

Answer 3

• reference to the walk of a penguin

- enjambment

Question 4

Has spread a deep commercial stain

Answer 4

• spilt by a commercial carrier
• monetisation has real life consequences
• materialism

Question 5

Over his downy shirt front. Sleazy, grey,

Answer 5

• feathers
• tainted making it less
• unnatural stain

Question 6

It clogs the sleekness. Far too well

Answer 6

• normally sleek ‘fur’ can be clogged with oil
• it can remember the trauma, affecting it physically and emotionally
• enjambment

Question 7

He must recall the past, to be so cautious:

Answer 7

• suffering from PTSD
• his home is no longer a place of safety
• colon provides an explanation

Question 8

Watch him step into the waves. He shudders

Answer 8

• without exuberance in its own natural element

- shock, fearfulness

Question 9

Under the froth; slides, slips, on wet sand,

Answer 9

• sibilance, increase in rhythm

- foregrounds the penguins hesitation and reluctance to go back into the sea

Question 10

Escaping to dryness, dearth, in a white cascade

Answer 10

• reluctance to enter the sea
• scarcity of something
• penguin resists the waves as it moves against the tide
• escaping to sand because sea is bad

Question 11

An involuntary shouldering off of gleam.

Answer 11

• water is bouncing of the penguin and catching the light

- lost a sense of vitality

Question 12

Hands push him back into the sea. He stands

Answer 12

• rescuers trying to usher him back into the see

- enjambment

Question 13

In pained and silent expostulation.

Answer 13

• his life will never be the same
• can not convey the protest
• victim

Question 14

Once he knew a sunlit, leaping smoothness,

Answer 14

• what his life was vs. now

- brighter before the oil spill quite literally

Question 15

But close with his head’s small knoll, and dark,

Answer 15

• can not escape the idea of the oil

Question 16

He retains the image: Oil on sea,

Answer 16

• idea of pollution

Question 17

Green slicks, black lassos of sludge

Answer 17

• visual
• patches of oil tainting the sea
• metaphor suggesting the oil is a constraint like a lasso
• awful and trapping

Question 18

Sleeving the breakers in a stain-spread scarf.

Answer 18

• sibilance
• breakers encased in oil
• metaphor of oil to a scarf

Question 19

He shudders now from the clean flinching wave,

Answer 19

• fear
• waves are clean yet fearful and apprehensive
• flinching from the waves

Question 20

Turns and plods back up the yellow sand,

Answer 20

• low spirits

- emotional fatigue from trauma

Question 21

Ineffably wary, triumphantly sad.

Answer 21

• oxymoron
• anxiety can not be expressed
• sadness has triumphed all

Question 22

He is immensely wise: he trusts nobody. His senses

Answer 22

• wisdom through experience

- colon provide explanation

Question 23

Are clogged with experience. He eats

Answer 23

• the experience will affect the rest of his life

Question 24

Fish from the Saviour’s hands, and it tastes black.

Answer 24

• irony, since the saviours caused it
• fish are equally affected
• penguins sense have been affected

Question 25

enjambment

Answer 25

• emotional response is ongoing

Question 26

rhythm

Answer 26

• slow, unchanging

- enhances penguins dejection (depression / sadness)

Question 27

mood

Answer 27

• sombre

- highlights the long-lasting effects

Question 28

tone

Answer 28

• critical for humankind

- melancholy for nature