The Emigree Flashcards
“There once was a country”
- Ellipses creates caesura indicating a flashback
- Starting off like a fairytale
“sunlight clear”
- Pathetic fallacy - sunlight creates a positive image
- Juxtaposes her adult understanding
“I am told”
Aside - distinction between her experience & what has been heard
“my original view, the bright, filled paperweight”
Metaphor - souvenir - shiny & unrealistic - childlike memories
“sick with tyrants”
Personification - city has been infected
“The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes”
Connotation - innocence
“as time rolls its tanks’
Personifies time to emphasise its relentless/destructive nature/war
“Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.”
- Metaphor - linking memory of the city
- Value of memory
“It tastes of sunlight”
Synaesthesia - blur between taste & vision, the jumbling of senses reveal the confusion of memories - flawed
“my city comes to me in its own white plane”
“docile as paper”
Metaphor - open & vulnerable
“shining eyes”
“takes me dancing through the city”
Personification - memory - childlike tenderness
“accuse me of absence”
“accuse me of being dark in their free city”
Repetition - gives a sinister identity to the oppression of the new city
“evidence of sunlight”
Contrast of darkness & light to show the speaker coming to terms with two separate identities
What is the structure of The Emigree?
- 3 stanzas with repetitive elements such as sunlight
- Capturing memory
- Builds up this idea
- Facing up the dark place her city memory has become
What is the big idea of The Emigree?
A deep sense of conflict in terms of emotions & memories. The poet is torn between her childhood memory and her adult understanding.
