Poetry Quotations Power and Conflict

Question 1

Give two quotations for War Photographer and explain them briefly.

Answer 1

“Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands, which did not tremble then though seem to now.”

• The sibilance “solutions slop” emphasises the responsibility he had to help victims.

“A stranger’s features faintly start to twist before his eyes a half-formed ghost”

• The personification of the photo emphasises the the trauma caused by the conflict.

Question 2

Give three quotations for Ozymandias and briefly explain them.

Answer 2

“The lone and level sands stretch far away”

• The alliteration, nature goes on.

“Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,”

• Caesura and sibilance emphasises the irony. Visage meaning face.

” king of kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!”

• Dramatic irony, expects kingdom to survive. Best king but his story is being told by a traveller is ironic.

Question 3

Give three quotations for London and briefly explain them.

Answer 3

“The mind-forged manacles I hear”

• Alliteration highlights how trapped and controlled the people of London are.
• Metaphor emphasises control of thoughts and mindset, through manacles.

“Runs in blood down palace walls.”

• Metaphor emphasises exploitation and corruption in monarchy.

“Marks of weakness, marks of woe”.

• Breaks from iambic tetrameter. Repetition of marks.

Question 4

Give three quotations for Kamikaze and explain them briefly.

Answer 4

“a shaven head / full of powerful incantations”

• Metaphor. Spells controlling his head.

“he must have wondered / which had been the better way to die.”

• Modal verb. - Existential imagery thoughts after death.

“this / was no longer the father we loved.”

• End-stopped, end of his humanity. - Dehumanization.

Question 5

Give three quotations for My Last Duchess and explain them briefly.

Answer 5

“Looking as if she were alive.” (not end of line)

• Caesura, like terminated life of wife. Only ever a possession to him.

“(since none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)”

• Curtain symbolic of control. - Plosives - Enjambment - forcing statement across, free flow of wife’s defiance. -Repetition of first person pronouns.

“Taming a sea-hose, thought a rarity, / Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!”

• Embedded metaphor of taming. Statue is rare, he only cares about wealth.