Poems - Key Quotations

Question 1

COTLB

Quotation for: form of propaganda, pro-war

Answer 1

‘Honour the charge they made!/ Honour the Light Brigade’

Question 2

COTLB

Quotation for: structure - shorter line at end of each stanza

Answer 2

‘…the six hundred’

Question 3

COTLB

Quotation for: religious imagery

Answer 3

Biblical allusion, psalm 23 ‘valley of Death’

Question 4

COTLB

Quotation for: rising anticipation of danger

Answer 4

‘Into the jaws of Death,/ Into the mouth of Hell’

Question 5

COTLB

Quotation for: anaphora

Answer 5

‘Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward,’

Question 6

COTLB

Quotation for: regular rhyme

Answer 6

‘Storm’d at with shot and shell,/ While horse and hero fell,’

Question 7

Exposure

Quotation for: structure - shorter line at end of each stanza

Answer 7

‘But nothing happens’

Question 8

Exposure

Quotation for: religious imagery

Answer 8

‘For love of God seems dying’

Question 9

Exposure

Quotation for: ‘exposing’ reality and futility of war, war between soldiers and weather

Answer 9

‘Merciless iced east winds that knife us’

Question 10

Exposure

Quotation for: rhetorical question

Answer 10

‘Is it that we are dying?’

Question 11

Exposure

Quotation for: para-rhyme

Answer 11

‘Knive us … / […] nervous’

Question 12

Exposure

Quotation for: never ending pain and suffering (ellipsis)

Answer 12

‘The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow …’

Question 13

Exposure

Quotation for: weather is more deadly than soldiers (personification)

Answer 13

‘Merciless iced east winds that knive us …’

Question 14

Exposure

Quotation for: sibilance, lulling into false sense of security, auditory imagery - bullets zooming past ears

Answer 14

‘Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence’

Question 15

Exposure

Quotation for: cyclical structure, nothing achieved, just slowly dying

Answer 15

‘But nothing happens’

Question 16

Exposure

Quotation for: caesura, pause-mid line, division of soldiers from home

Answer 16

‘Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed’

Question 17

Remains

Quotation for: tone - colloquialism, everyday event for soldiers

Answer 17

‘One of them legs it up the road’

Question 18

Remains

Quotation for: treating their enemies badly, disrespect for them

Answer 18

‘Carted off in the back of a lorry’

Question 19

Remains

Quotation for: guilt, remorse

Answer 19

‘Probably armed, possibly not’

Question 20

Remains

Quotation for: structure, beginning mid-action, not organised, chaotic, unstable

Answer 20

‘On another occasion’

Question 21

Remains

Quotation for: triplets, doesn’t want to be the only one blamed

Answer 21

‘Well myself and somebody else and somebody else’

Question 22

Remains

Quotation for: shift in responsibility, deals with consequences alone

Answer 22

‘His bloody life in my bloody hands’

Question 23

Remains

Quotation for: enjambment, show life changing moment when looter is shot, life is broken

Answer 23

‘Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear / (new stanza) I see every round as it rips through his life -‘

Question 24

Remains

Quotation for: caesura - sense of finality, thought effects of war would switch off when he went home

Answer 24

‘Then I’m home on leave. But I blink’

Question 25

Remains

Quotation for: cyclical structure, goes round in circle, trauma soldier is experiencing is inescapable

Answer 25

‘Probably armed, possibly not’

Question 26

Remains
Quotation for: juxtaposed two different types of language - casual + horrific imagery - before and after effects on soldiers

Answer 26

‘Legs it’

‘Tosses his guts back into his body’

Question 27

Remains

Quotation for: vague language, indescribable horrors of war, not prepared

Answer 27

‘Sort of inside out’

Question 28

Remains

Quotation for: using war phrases - PTSD

Answer 28

‘Dug in behind enemy lines’

Question 29

Remains

Quotation for: breaking down, suffering from PTSD

Answer 29

Short 2 line stanza at end -

‘but near to the knuckle, here and now, / his bloody life in my bloody hands.’

Question 30

Poppies

Quotation for: guilt, remorseful, regrets letting son go to war

Answer 30

‘A split second / and you were away’

Question 31

Poppies

Quotation for: treating their own soldiers well, respect

Answer 31

‘Individual war graves’

Question 32

Poppies

Quotation for: allusion to 12 days of Christmas - loss of hope - one (son) gone

Answer 32

‘A single dove flew from the pear tree’

Question 33

Poppies

Quotation for: enjambment, break in structure - reflects his mother is breaking emotionally

Answer 33

‘All my words / flattened, rolled, turned into felt, / (new stanza) slowly melting.’

Question 34

Poppies
Quotation for: juxtaposed two different types of language - domestic + war-related words - suggests how those left behind feel, effects of suffering in everyday life

Answer 34

‘Reinforcements of scarf, gloves’

Reinforcements - military related

Question 35

Poppies

Quotation for: that mother was unlucky and easy to break

Answer 35

‘Like a wishbone’

Question 36

Poppies

Quotation for: caesura - needing break for grief

Answer 36

‘Slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked / with you,’

Question 37

Poppies

Quotation for: thinking back to the past, war is seen as game

Answer 37

‘I listened, hoping to hear / your playground voice catching on the wind’