Storm On The Island And Remains Flashcards
The speaker in Storm on the Island is…
Laconic, matter-of-fact, gently ironic
The language the speaker uses in Storm on the Island is…?
Vernacular/colloquial but inclusive, multiple instances of ‘we’ and ‘us’…
The speaker has what kind of perspective about the troubles his community faces?
Stoic/matter of fact/ironic (eg, ‘the…earth has never troubled us with hay’)
The title of the poem links the islander’s struggles with nature to what…?
The Irish troubles/politics and conflict
The imagery Heaney uses about the storm features…?
Classical allusion (‘can raise a tragic chorus in a gale’), oxymorons (‘exploding comfortably’) and military language (‘wind dives/and strafes///space is a salvo’)
At the end of the poem Heaney compares fear to…
‘A huge nothing’ ending on a reflective almost philosophical tone
In Remains the speaker’s voice is…
Vernacular, simple, matter-of-fact
The speaker is an…?
Ordinary soldier on patrol in a ‘desert land’ (a conflict like Iraq or Afghanistan)
The speaker uses what kind of language to describe the central episode…?
Simple, direct, down to earth - starting in media res, ‘on another occasion we got sent out…’
In relation to the episode, the speaker introduces a refrain which plays an important part in the poem: what is it?
‘Probably armed, possibly not’
What is the effect of the refrain, ‘probably armed, possibly not’?
It introduces ambiguity that haunts the soldier
The imagery in the poem turns..?
Visceral as the shooting is described: ‘ he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out’/ ‘pain itself’…’One of my mates…tosses his guts back into his body.’
The final section of the poem explores…?
The aftermath and the soldier’s PTSD
Armitage uses a metaphor to explore the traces of the looter:…?
‘Blood shadow’ - this foreshadows the PTSD that
What line suggests that the looter incident will overshadow the speaker?
‘End of story except not really’
