The Emigree

Question 1

Who wrote the Emigree?

Answer 1

Carol Rumens

Question 2

What is the effect of an ellipses?

Answer 2

It creates a caesura, indicating flashbacks of past memories

Question 3

What language device is “sunlight-clear”?

Answer 3

Pathetic Fallacy

Question 4

What effect does the repetition of “accuse” have?

Answer 4

It gives a sinister identity to the new city’s oppression

Question 5

What is an example of personification?

Answer 5

‘My city comes to me’

‘Time rolls its tanks’

Question 6

What key techniques are used?

Answer 6

Repetition
Juxtaposition
Imagery
Personification

Question 7

What is the theme presented?

Answer 7

Individual freedom versus forced absence

Question 8

What method is used throughout?

Answer 8

Extended metaphor

Question 9

What is the effect of synaesthesia?

Answer 9

Shows the confusion of memories

Emphasises the flawed but joyous nature of the memory

Question 10

What does “I am branded by an impression of sunlight” convey?

Answer 10

Sense of marked for wrongness

Question 11

How does the poem begin?

Answer 11

‘There once was a country’

Question 12

When did she leave the country?

Answer 12

When she was a child.

Question 13

What do the words ‘sunlight-clear’ and ‘bright’ suggest about her memories?

Answer 13

They are positive

Question 14

What does the ‘white streets of that city’ suggest?

Answer 14

The city is pure.

Question 15

What is taken away when she moves to the new country?

Answer 15

Her passport.

Question 16

What could the references to light and dark represent?

Answer 16

Good and Bad

Question 17

Which poem does it link with most effectively?

Answer 17

Checking Out Me History

Question 18

What is an emigrant?

Answer 18

Someone who leaves their country to settle in another, permanently

Question 19

There is a strong sense of what in the poem?

Answer 19

Nostalgia

Question 20

What is one way a sense of danger communicated in the poem?

Answer 20

The repetition of “they”

- it is not revealed who “they” are, though, the reader implies “they” are a threat

Question 21

What could the city represent?

Answer 21

Anything that the speaker has had to leave behind

Question 22

What is the effect of the poem being written in first person?

Answer 22

It creates a personal ad intimate tone

Question 23

What techniques mirror how fragmented and war-torn the place she has fled from is?

Answer 23

The lack of regular rhythm and rhyme
Enjambment
Caesura

Question 24

What is another effect of enjambment in the poem?

Answer 24

It gives the poem fluidity and a certain gentleness and tenderness.
This could emphasise her affection towards the city.

Question 25

Compared to the lack of regular rhyme or rhythm, what could the regular stanzas reflect?

Answer 25

They could reflect the speaker’s refusal to the let the disruption and war overpower her memories.

Question 26

What could the slightly longer final stanza reflect?

Answer 26

Her desire to prolong those positive memories (e.g. how she is dancing through the city)

Question 27

What are some of the key themes explored in the poem?

Answer 27

Danger and bravery
Memory and Nostalgia
Childhood

Question 28

Give an example of personification in the poem:

Answer 28

“I comb its hair and love its shining eyes”

Question 29

What is the effect of the personification in “I comb its hair and love its shining eyes”?

Answer 29

It intensifies the sense of the speaker’s love and affection towards the city

Question 30

Give an example of a metaphor in the poem:

Answer 30

“The worst news I receive of it cannot break / My original view, the bright filled paperweight”

Question 31

What does the metaphor “The worst news I receive of it cannot break / My original view, the bright filled paperweight” suggest?

Answer 31

The strength and solidity of the speaker’s positive memories?

Question 32

What is the purpose of light and colour imagery in the poem?

Answer 32

To emphasise the speaker’s overwhelmingly positive memories of the city

Question 33

Give examples of light and colour imagery in the poem:

Answer 33

“my memory of it is sunlight-clear…”
“the white streets….”
“I shall have every coloured molecule of it….”

Question 34

What does the repeated use of possessive pronouns convey?

Answer 34

The speaker’s deep admiration for, and pride in, her country

Question 35

What is the purpose of not naming the city?

Answer 35

Rumens wants many people to find relevance in her writing. She could be writing on behalf of all the emigrees.

Question 36

What phrases gives the reader the impression the speaker is an exile?

Answer 36

“There was once a city…I left it as a child”
“Frontiers rise between us”
“I have no passport, there’s no way back at all”
“They accuse me”

Question 37

What does Rumens draw a contrast between in the poem?

Answer 37

The speaker’s positive memories and their negative impressions of the city now.

Question 38

What techniques draw on the contrast between positive memories and negative impressions?

Answer 38

Irony
Repetition and change of tone
Positive vs negative images

Question 39

How is Irony created in the poem?

Answer 39

Even though the speaker remembers her city fondly, she seems at odds with the people currently controlling the city.
The irony is that “they” see it as “their free city” but the language she uses like “sick with tyrants” suggests restriction and oppresion

Question 40

What are positive, bright images associated with the speaker’s memories juxtaposed with in the poem?

Answer 40

Harsher, negative images of the homelands current, war-torn state.

Question 41

What does the juxtaposition of positive and negative images emphasise?

Answer 41

The strength of her memories that overpower the far more negative reality

Question 42

What word or phrase is repeated in the last stanza to give the poem a more menacing and negative tone?

Answer 42

“They”

Question 43

What phrase does the speaker use to make the phrase “their free city” sound ironic?

Answer 43

“Sick with tyrants”

Question 44

What quotation personifies the city and emphasises the strength of her dislike for the people currently controlling the city?

Answer 44

“It may be sick with tyrants”

Question 45

What quotation conjures up images of innocence and purity?

Answer 45

“I comb its hair and love its shining eyes”

Question 46

What poems could you compare with The Emigree on the theme of conflicting emotions?

Answer 46

Bayonet Charge

Poppies

Question 47

What poems could compare with The Emigree on the theme of Identity?

Answer 47

Kamikaze

Checking Out Me History

Question 48

What poems could you comapre with The Emigree on the theme of power of place?

Answer 48

London

The Prelude