Power and Conflict Poetry

Question 1

Top and Tail for Checking out me History

Answer 1

• “Dem tell me, Dem tell me”
• “Bandage up me eye with me own history”
• “I carving out me identity”

Question 2

Top and Tail for Kamikaze

Answer 2

• “Her father embarked at sunrise”
• “The dark prince”
• “Which had been the better way to die”

Question 3

Top and Tail for Emigree

Answer 3

• “There once was a country……I left it as a child”
• “I have no passport”
• “Sunlight”

Question 4

Top and Tail for Poppies

Answer 4

• “Three days before Armistice Sunday”
• “Released a songbird from its cage”
• “Your playground voice catching on the wind”

Question 5

Top and Tail for War photographer

Answer 5

• “In his dark room he is finally alone”
• “Spools of suffering”
• “They do not care”

Question 6

Top and Tail for Tissue

Answer 6

• “Paper”
• “Thinned by age”
• “Skin”

Question 7

Top and Tail for Remains

Answer 7

• “On another occasion, we got sent out”
• “blood-shadow”
• “His bloody life in my bloody hands”

Question 8

Top and Tail for Bayonet Charge

Answer 8

• “Suddenly he awoke and was running”
• “Patriotic tear”
• “His terror’s touchy dynamite”

Question 9

Top and Tail for Storm on the Island

Answer 9

• “We are prepared”
• “Exploding comfortably”
• “It’s a huge nothing that we fear”

Question 10

Top and Tail for Exposure

Answer 10

• “Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us”
• “For love of God seems dying”
  “But nothing happens”

Question 11

Top and Tail for Charge of The Light Brigade

Answer 11

• “Half a league, half a league”
• “Jaws of death”
• “Noble Six hundred”

Question 12

Top and Tail for My Last Duchess

Answer 12

• “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall”
• “I gave commands, then all smiles stopped together”
• “me”

Question 13

Top and Tail for Prelude

Answer 13

• “One summer evening led by her”
• “A huge peak, black and huge………. upreared its head”
• “Trouble to my dreams.”

Question 14

Top and Tail for Ozymandias

Answer 14

• “I met a traveller from an antique land”
• “Colossal Wreck”
• “The lone and level sands stretch far away”

Question 15

Top and Tail for London

Answer 15

• “I wander thro’ each charter’d street”
• “Mind-forg’d manacles”
• “Marriage hearse”

Question 16

Ozymandias:
Who is speaking for most of the poem?

Answer 16

The narrator, who we assume is the poet, is speaking. (He recounts the traveller’s tale).

Question 17

Ozymandias:
What poetic form does Shelley use?

Answer 17

Petrarchan Sonnet

Question 18

Ozymandias:
Which details tell us about Ozymandias’s character?

Answer 18

“Wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”
Suggests he was a heartless ruler.

Question 19

What is the literal meaning of Ozymandias’s name? Why is this ironic?

Answer 19

“Ruler of Nothing”
Ironic because that is what he has become now (though it is not what it was).

Question 20

Ozymandias:
Does the traveller have more admiration for the sculptor or his subject?

Answer 20

He admires the sculptor more; for the way, the sculptor’s art has captured its subject’s character so perfectly
The sculpture has also stayed standing which is more than you can say for Ozymandias’s kingdom.

Question 21

Ozymandias:
What do the words, “antique land” in line one suggest?

Answer 21

That the traveller has returned from an ancient civilisation.

Question 22

Ozymandias:
There is irony in the final line. Explain where you think the irony lies

Answer 22

Ironic because Ozymandias’s “works” referred to in his inscription must have once existed in what is now a vast area of desert.

Question 23

Ozymandias:
There are three voices in the poem. Who are they and what is the effect of having this many voices?

Answer 23

The poet, The traveller and Ozymandias
They give us three perspectives and create a sense of distance between the reader and what has happened to Ozymandias’s kingdom. They give a mythical quality to the narrative.

Question 24

Ozymandias:
In what way could Ozymandias be said to live on, even though his kingdom has disappeared?

Answer 24

Through the ruins of his statue and the sculptor’s artistry (and of course through Shelley’s sonnet).

Question 25

Ozymandias:
Who do you think Ozymandias refers to by “ye mighty”?

Answer 25

It could refer to other powerful rulers, those who lived at the same time as Ozymandias or those who came afterwards.

Question 26

Ozymandias:
How do the setting and the narrator contribute to our sense of Ozymandias’s diminished power?

Answer 26

The poem is set in an unspecified “antique land” to make it clear that Ozymandias’s achievements belong in the past. The place where the statue is found has no name because nothing of the great city remains. We learn about the statue third hand, creating distance between us and Ozymandias.

Question 27

Ozymandias:
What does the poem suggest about the nature of power?

Answer 27

That it is fleeting. Nothing remains of Ozymandias’s empire but a half-buried statue.

Question 28

Ozymandias:
How does the poet create a negative impression of the character of Ozymandias?

Answer 28

Through details of his expression: “frown” and “sneer”; the contempt with which the artist viewed him and the arrogance of his self-given title, “king of kings”.

Question 29

Top and Tail for Storm on the Island

Answer 29

• “We are prepared”
• “Exploding comfortably”
• “It’s a huge nothing that we fear”