Postcard from a travel snob Flashcards
context
-1990s and the shift in travel (GAP year, budget/package holiday) - became easier for people
-poet and crime novelist
-class difference
form
-postcard conventions subverted
-4 quatrains
-abab rhyme scheme
-enjambment and caesura (break conventions of rhyme schemes bc narrator is on a rant)
‘I do not wish that anyone were here.’
-declarative sentence - blunt tone
-subverts from conventional postcards ‘wish you were here’ - narrator believes that being isolated is the key to a successful holiday
‘This place is not a holiday resort
with karaoke nights and pints of beer
for drunken tourist types - perish the thought.’
-negation
-deliberately vague
-enjambment spills across 3 lines which creates a fast paced rant
-plosive alliteration - as if those thoughts are venomous (looking down on people)
-dash - interrupts horrible thought
-old-fashioned language
‘This is a peaceful place, untouched by man -
not like your seaside-town-consumer-hell.’
-alliteration suggesting the tranquility
-‘untouched by man’ - ironic, as the narrator is there
-compound noun/metaphor - ironic/emotive
‘Nobody speaks English (apart from me, and rest assured,
I’m not your sun-and-sangria-two-weeks
small-minded-package-philistine-abroad).’
-sweeping, declarative - narrator presents themselves as if they know all
-parenthesis
-long compound noun - even more worked up
-sibilance, fast pace
-irony - his view of the world is a small-minded one.
‘While you’re as multi-cultural as me,
your friends become wine connoisseurs, not drinks.
I’m not a British tourist in the sea;
I am an anthropologist in trunks.’
-positions himself as someone to aspire to
-impact of verb ‘become’ suggests a change
-low frequency lexis indicating academic superiority
-declaratives - subverts conventions
-irony - he presents himself as someone who studies humans, while having no self-awareness
