Power And Conflict Anthology

Question 1

Remains : Narrative

Answer 1

A soldier clearing a bank, shoots someone who runs. The soldier speaks candidly about the PTSD he suffers as a result.

Question 2

Remains : Context

Answer 2

The poem is about a soldier who is haunted by his involvement in a shooting of a bank looter.

Question 3

Remains : Structure

Answer 3

The first seven stanzas are in largely unrhymed quatrains close quatrainA stanza in poetry consisting of a group of four lines.

Question 4

Remains : Form

Answer 4

Quatrains 1-4 = the shooting - stanzas 1-7 -unrhyming - quotations
Quatrains 5-8 = the aftermath - stanza 8 = 2 lines, emphasis = speaker cannot rid himself of the memory of killing = disintegrated mind of speaker.

Question 5

Remains : Language Techniques

Answer 5

The language of the poem is anecdotal, which, along with the pace and rhythm, gives the sense the speaker is directly telling us his story. Slang such as ‘mates’ and colloquial. language (such as ‘legs it’) is used throughout.

Question 6

War Photographer : Narrative

Answer 6

The poem is about a soldier who is haunted by his involvement in a shooting of a bank looter. It also explores the repercussions of war for individuals who come out of conflict zones and raises awareness of conditions such as ​PTSD​.

Question 7

War Photographer : Context

Answer 7

The poem examines the effects of guilt and trauma both during and after active duty, and suggests that the effects of wartime violence linger long after soldiers leave the battlefield.

Question 8

War Photographer : Structure

Answer 8

• minor sentences ( caesura)
• picture twisting literally
• appears fake instigating
• last saw him alive, but probably dead - enjambment

Question 9

War Photographer : Form

Answer 9

Line 2 - “ordered rows - equal stanza length
- contrasting the disorder on the front line.

Question 10

War Photographer : Language Techniques

Answer 10

• pronoun - juxtaposition
• governement, publicans
• sibilance - sensory imagery
• foreign suggest distance
• religous imagery - pace at which priest prepares a mass with respect
• allusions (alluding to) the old testement
• verb
• potential PTSD
• photographer must be respectful.

Question 11

Tissue : Narrative

Answer 11

This poem explores the theme of humanity through its contemplation of human stories and the interconnectedness of our lives

Question 12

Tissue : Context

Answer 12

The poem is written from the point of view of someone today looking out at the conflict and troubles of the modern world: destruction, war and politics, money and wealth as well as issues like terrorism and identity.

Question 13

Tissue : Structure

Answer 13

The first nine stanzas are each four lines long. The final stanza, however, is one line in length, drawing our attention to it. Separating out this line emphasises the connection between paper and skin, showing the significance of human life. The poem lacks regular rhyme.

Question 14

Tissue : Form

Answer 14

Tissue is mainly constructed in unrhymed, irregular quatrains close quatrainA stanza in poetry consisting of a group of four lines.. This form can be seen to represent the irregularity of life and the flimsy nature of the tissue paper the poem refers to.

Question 15

Tissue : Language Techniques

Answer 15

The speaker emphasises the delicacy of the paper by using adjectives. throughout the poem. The paper is described as ‘fine’, ‘thin’ and ‘transparent’. The effect of light is also emphasised with ‘luminous’, ‘daylight’ and the way the ‘sun shines through’.

Question 16

Exposure : Narrative

Answer 16

Wilfred Owen’s poem focuses on the misery felt by World War One soldiers waiting overnight in the trenches.

Question 17

Exposure : Context

Answer 17

Exposure is about what life was like in the trenches during the First World War. By describing the terrible natural conditions under which the soldiers lived and died, Owen highlights some of the less considered issues of war: the boredom, the ongoing suffering and the sense of hopelessness.

Question 18

Exposure : Form

Answer 18

The poem is structured as a series of eight stanzas. of five lines. The last line of each stanza is noticeably shorter and indented which emphasises its importance. It is also part of the more general disruption of the rhythmic structure which uses hexameters.

Question 19

Exposure : Language Techniques

Answer 19

Owen is employing a technique known as half rhyme close half rhymesWhen the final consonants (not vowels) of the final words of lines are the same, but the overall sound is not quite the same.. This helps to unsettle the reader and defy the expected outcome, something which again echoes the experience of war.

Question 20

Exposure : Structure

Answer 20

The poem is structured as a series of eight stanzas. of five lines. The last line of each stanza is noticeably shorter and indented which emphasises its importance. It is also part of the more general disruption of the rhythmic structure which uses hexameters.

Question 21

My Last Dutchess : Narrative

Answer 21

‘My Last Duchess’ is written in the form of a first person narration, of an arrogant and callous Duke who tours an unknown guest around his gallery. The tone of the narration is aristocratic and detached.

Question 22

My Last Dutchess : Context

Answer 22

The poem is set in Renaissance Italy and is narrated by the Duke of Ferrara, who is showing a painting of his late wife, the Duchess, to a visitor. Through the Duke’s speech, the reader learns about the Duchess’s personality and behaviour, as well as the Duke’s own character flaws.

Question 23

My Last Dutchess : structure

Answer 23

My Last Duchess’ is a dramatic monologue which is structured as one lengthy stanza (continuous form). This one stanza is 56 lines long. The poem consists of the Duke’s dramatic monologue addressed to an unnamed envoy. It opens with the Duke showing this envoy a painting of his late wife.

Question 24

My Last Dutchess : Form

Answer 24

Browning characterized this poem as a dramatic lyric; but essentially it is a dramatic monologue, a genre typically associated with Browning, where one person speaks to a presumed audience.

Question 25

My Last Dutchess : Language Techniques

Answer 25

Browning combines the literary device enjambment, sentences that run from one line of poetry to the next, with the formal conventions of rhymed couplets (AABB) and iambic pentameter. Notice how this creates an intentionally jarring style that adds to the disturbing impression made by the Duke in his monologue.

Question 26

London : Narrative

Answer 26

The poem centres from a ​first-person perspective ​on an annoymous speaker (who could be assumed to be Blake) walking through London, and commenting on the filfh and currouption he sees, including the child labour, monarchial abuse, and prostiution he witnesses.

Question 27

London : Context

Answer 27

This poem is taken from “songs of experience”. It reveals the poet’s feelings towards the society in which he lived. England in the 1800s became very oppressive, influenced by fears over the French Revolution. Laws began to be imposed which restricted the freedom of individuals.

Question 28

London : structure

Answer 28

‘London’ by William Blake is a four stanza poem that is separated into sets of four lines, known as quatrains. These quatrains follow a rhyme scheme of ABAB throughout.

Question 29

London : Language Techniques

Answer 29

The poem is rife with literary and poetic devices, among which the most important are allusion, alliteration, anaphora, metaphor, oxymoron, and symbolism. The main themes of the poem ‘London’ are freedom and restriction, corruption, decay and death, and the loss of innocence.

Question 30

Ozymandias : Narrative

Answer 30

The poem concerns the discovery of a semi-destroyed and decaying statue of Ramesses II, also known as Ozymandias, and shows how power deteriorates and will not last forever.

Question 31

Ozymandias : Context

Answer 31

Shelley’s poem takes its title from the Egyptian king Ramesses II, known to the Greeks by the name Ozymandias. In 1817, news broke that archeologists had discovered fragments of a funereal statue of Ramesses II and intended to send the pieces to the British museum. This discovery inspired Shelley’s pen.

Question 32

Ozymandias : Stucture

Answer 32

The poem is a sonnet and is written in iambic pentameter. Some suggest that the sonnet form has been used to mirror Ozymandias’ egotistical love of himself. The first eight lines (octave) the statue is described in its different parts to shows its deterioration over time.

Question 33

Ozymandias : Form

Answer 33

In Ozymandias, Shelley uses a very different scheme: ABAB-ACDC-EDE-FDF. In some cases these are are slant rhymes—“appear”/“despair”—and resist detection.

Question 34

Ozymandias : Language Techniques

Answer 34

Use of noun and alliteration The speaker also describes the face of the statute as having a ‘sneer of cold command’. The noun ‘sneer’ depicts the condescending, haughty and arrogant look on Ozymandias’ face. The use of alliteration also reinforces his attitude as callous and sympathetic.

Question 35

London : Form

Answer 35

The stanzas consist of alternating rhymes and are written in the iambic tetrameter. The third stanza is acrostic, as the starting letter of the following 3 lines spells out the word ‘hear,’ which is an important sense for this poem that focuses on many sounds of London and its residents.

Question 36

The Emigrée : Narrative

Answer 36

The poem presents itself as a first-person account of an émigrée’s relationship with her homeland. However, given the place is not named, the poem offers a more general consideration of the relationship between people, the places they left behind in childhood and to which they are unable to return.

Question 37

The Emigrée : Context

Answer 37

The poem is about somebody who had to leave their country as a child to be safe. They are looking back fondly whilst lamenting the discrimination they experience in their new country. Rumens was born in London but also lived in Belfast and Wales as well as travelling widely throughout Russia and eastern Europe.

Question 38

The Emigrée : Structure

Answer 38

The poem is composed of three stanzas close stanzaLines of poetry that make up a section; a verse.. The first two stanzas are eight lines each and the last stanza has nine lines. Why there’s an extra line is unclear.

Question 39

The Emigrée : Form

Answer 39

The poem presents itself as a first-person account of an émigrée’s relationship with her homeland.

Question 40

The Emigrée : Language Techniques

Answer 40

Rumens’ use of simile (and metaphor) perhaps suggests the way in which the speaker is shaping her memories and making up her own narrative about her relationship with her homeland. The city is personified. and Rumens perhaps makes a play on words. when she describes it flying to her ‘in its own white plane’.

Question 41

Charge of the Light Brigade : Narrative

Answer 41

The poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is about a group of 600 British soldiers who were sent into a battle against a much stronger group of Russian soldiers during the Crimean War. The light brigade fought bravely for their country, but lost many men to the Russians.

Question 42

The Charge of the Light Brigade : Context

Answer 42

The poem recounts an assault by a brigade of British cavalry under the command of Lord James Thomas Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, which cost the lives of 113 men and injured 143 others. The charge took place at the Battle of Balaclava, during Britain’s war with Russia in the Crimea in the mid 19th century.

Question 43

The charge of the light brigade : Structure

Answer 43

The Charge of the Light Brigade” consists of six stanzas of varying length. Many of the lines are written in dactylic dimeter, which means there are six syllables in each line, with two stressed syllables and four unstressed syllables.

Question 44

The charge of the light brigade : Form

Answer 44

Tennyson’s depiction of events was written shortly after he read about the Charge in the Times newspaper. He similarly views the men’s actions as heroic and uses alliteration, a strong rhyme and rhythm, as well as personification and onomatopoeia to help put his views across.

Question 45

The charge of the light brigade : Language Techniques

Answer 45

Tennyson’s depiction of events was written shortly after he read about the Charge in the Times newspaper. He similarly views the men’s actions as heroic and uses alliteration, a strong rhyme and rhythm, as well as personification and onomatopoeia to help put his views across.

Question 46

Checking Out Me History : Narrative

Answer 46

“Checking Out Me History” was written by the British Guyanese poet John Agard and first published in 2005, in the collection Half-Caste. The poem focuses on the holes in the British colonial education system—particularly that system’s omission of important figures from African, Caribbean, and indigenous history.

Question 47

Checking out me history : context

Answer 47

The poet emphasises how we often celebrate our national or cultural history, without looking at the history and culture of those we historically oppressed. The main themes of the poem include Identity, Pride, Power and Anger.

Question 48

Checking out me history : structure

Answer 48

It is a dramatic monologue which sounds like a speech about non-European history: the poet teaches the reader his ‘history’. The poem alternates between two structures which are marked by two different fonts. Repetition of ‘Dem’ emphasises how the poet doesn’t identify with the people/teachers who taught him history.

Question 49

Checking out me history : Form

Answer 49

The poem is written in free verse, with the occasional use of rhyming quatrains (four-line stanzas). The poem contains 10 stanzas and a total of 53 lines.

Question 50

Checking out me history : Language techniques

Answer 50

Agard uses a dialect (Creole) in this poem shown by the phonetic spelling, making clear that language is part of identity his linguistic heritage. He does not bow to the conventions of using Standard English, which is often seen as a symbol of colonisation.