Poetry Themes Flashcards
Social Structures and Power
Ozymandias: Shelley presents the arrogance of the King’s leadership through features such as the statue’s features.
London: Blake singles out the lower classes for sympathy and contrasts them with the richer.
My Last Duchess: Browning guides the reader to interpret that the Duke’s interpretation of the Duchess’s behaviour is unreasonable.
Resisting oppression
Checking out me history: The poem itself is an act of resistance.
London: Blake references black and red ink links to the French revolution.
Social control
My Last Duchess: The Duke believes that the Duchess should know how she is supposed to behave.
Responsibility
London: Blake implies that the “church” and the “palace” should bear responsibility for the chimney-sweeper’s miserable situation.
Remains: Armitage uses repetitive phrasing and ideas to show how the soldier is haunted. He is haunted by the responsibility for the life he contributed to taking.
War photographer: The photographer feels a duty. It is what keeps him doing his job.
War - Participation.
Exposure: Soldiers in the First World War wait while “nothing happens”. Owen makes it clear that inaction was frequent.
Bayonet Charge: A soldier rises to charge, but is struck with indecision.
Remains: Armitage offers a haunting vision of the reality of having to kill someone.
Charge of the Light Brigade: Tennyson evokes the atmosphere of the battlefield and emphasises the risks taken by soldiers.
War - Being left behind.
Poppies: Weir compares a mother’s memories of the day her son leaves for war with her earlier memories of his childhood.
Charge of the Light Brigade: This poem has a more official tone to it. It seems to command its audience on how to respond.
War Photographer: This poem discusses the desensitisation of the masses to images of war in the media. Duffy presents the public as an unmoved audience who “do not care”.
Kamikaze: It is those left behind who judge and punish the pilot when he does not carry out his mission.
Attitudes to war.
Exposure: This poem offers us the weary attitude of soldiers in the trenches when everything seemed hopeless.
Charge of the Light Brigade: This poem displays a strongly positive attitude towards the soldiers themselves.
War Photographer: The photographer has aa professional attitude to working in a war zone, controlling his feelings in order to do “what someone must”.
Bayonet Charge: This poem shows relatively complex attitudes to war through the soldier’s indecision.
The effects of war.
Remains: Armitage demonstrates the psychological damage endured by an individual.
Kamikaze: This poem considers the effects on an individual.
The Emigree: The effects shown take place after a family has fled the country in conflict.
Poppies: Weir shows us the effects in a more subtle way. She focuses on the family.
Nature.
The Prelude: Wordsworth shows the beauty and grandeur of nature when the boy is first rowing out and notices details like the “small circles glittering idly”. However, he is soon terrified and becomes haunted.
Storm on the island: This poem shows the power of nature to destroy.
Exposure: This shows how dangerous nature can be.
Ozymandias: Nature has wiped away a ruler’s empire.
Memory.
Remains: The effect on the speaker’s mental health of the memory is the central theme.
The Prelude: This poem concludes with the idea that the boy’s next few days and nights after the episode are haunted by the incident and he is unable to take any pleasure from it.
Poppies: Weir uses the speaker’s earlier memories as a structural device.
