Rain

Question 1

Title-Rain

Answer 1

• Simple and concise
• The main focus of the poem
• No details: intrigues the reader

Question 2

Poet context

Answer 2

War poet
British Army to fight in the First World War

Question 3

Poem context

Answer 3

The poem Rain in written in 1916, when was in training as a World War I soldier)

Question 4

Theme

Answer 4

War
Death
Solitude
Grief
Love and Lost

Question 5

Structure

Answer 5

• A single unbroken stanza
• Repetition of “rain”/ “death”/ “love”.
• The stanza is shaped like heavy rain

Question 6

Form

Answer 6

• Blank verse
• Iambic pentameter
• No fixed rhyme scheme
• First person
• Frequent enjambement that brings the flow of the rain

Question 7

“On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me”

Answer 7

The use of polysyndeton creates discontinuity and segregation. The structural separation of “and me” from the body sentence mirrors the poet’s of isolation from the world. When reading this line, discontinuity also portrays the sound of rain drops, soaking readers into the scene, as experiencing the rain with poet. Repetition of “and” also juxtaposes with loneliness of the poet, since all he has is a ‘bleak hut’ and ‘solitude’.

Question 8

“Since I was born into this solitude”

Answer 8

Repetition of solitude -> numerous amount of nothing -> emphasize solitude -> number juxtaposes with the meaning -> ironically suggests his loneliness and pity

Question 9

“Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff”

Answer 9

sibilance, sinister and cold, loneliness
still and stiff could imply corpse of poet’s friend
myriads suggests all friend die, “broken” shows the brutalness of war since it tears “reeds” (implying human) into pieces.

Question 10

“Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain”

Answer 10

• Repetition of “rain”: emphasis on the magnitude of the rain.
• “midnight” and “wild”: descriptive words to the “rain” to point out an image of the rain.
• “nothing”: highlights the scale of the rain

Question 11

“Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death”

Answer 11

• Alliteration of “l” and “w”: repetitive, like the rain
• Juxtaposition of “love” and “death”: brings out the theme of how those are related
• Enjambment: bring out the flow of the rain

Question 12

“If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.”

Answer 12

• Enjambment: put emphasis on “cannot”
• “Disappoint”: on its own, put emphasis on it
• Ambiguous language: make the reader reread