Refugee Blues

Question 1

Say this city has ten million souls,

Answer 1

• represents a whole (synecdoche)

Question 2

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Answer 2

• contrast between mansions and holes (disparity in wealth)

- social class contrast

Question 3

Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Answer 3

• he is addressing someone else

- repetition shows that they are othered

Question 4

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Answer 4

• they no longer belong to their own place

- country was beautiful

Question 5

Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:

Answer 5

• the country still exist, he however had to flee

Question 6

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

Answer 6

• refugee status

- repetition enhances the malancholic tone

Question 7

In the village churchyard there grows old yew,

Answer 7

• image of hope and nostalgia
• symbolic of rebirth
• yew is poisonous

Question 8

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Answer 8

• symbolic of rebirth

Question 9

old passports can’t do that, my dear, they can’t do that.

Answer 9

• without current passports

Question 10

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;

Answer 10

• a sense of hope

- gesture of politeness

Question 11

Asked me politely to return next year:

Answer 11

• does not help with the present

Question 12

But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Answer 12

• repetition reinforces the lack of choice

- futile situation

Question 13

Came to a public meeting, the speaker got up and said;

Answer 13

• highlights the xenophobia

Question 14

“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”:

Answer 14

• positioned to see the refugees as a threat

- reader is positioned to feel empathy and distress for the speaker

Question 15

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Answer 15

• disheartened

- resigned because they have been othered

Question 16

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Answer 16

• can look out but not journey

Question 17

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Answer 17

• the fish are seen as having more freedom than the speaker

- the freedom is visible but beyond reach

Question 18

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Answer 18

• such a short distance physically, but a large circumstantial one

Question 19

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

Answer 19

• not real freedom

- envy for the birds

Question 20

They had no politicians and sang their ease:

Answer 20

• no worries

- circumstance has come from political reasons

Question 21

They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Answer 21

• birds were free because they weren’t human

Question 22

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

Answer 22

• echoes the futility of his dreams and hopes

Question 23

A thousand windows and a thousand doors:

Answer 23

• many dwellings

- door is metaphorically closed to them

Question 24

Not on of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Answer 24

• futility

- despondency

Question 25

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;

Answer 25

• desolate setting

- going nowhere

Question 26

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Answer 26

• enhances the idea of their vulnerability

Question 27

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

Answer 27

• their lives are peril

- inhumane (hunted)

Question 28

Overview

Answer 28

• part of the cycle ‘Twelve Songs’
• Forced migration and exile
• Blues like the genre
• ## AAB