War Photographer

Question 1

Main themes

Answer 1

• Suffering
• War
• Guilt
• Religion
• Misfortune vs privilege

Question 2

Rhyme scheme

Answer 2

• ABBCDD
• The rigidity of the rhyme scheme juxtaposes the chaos of the content he is photographing
• This represents the order he brings or is trying to bring through photography, including the order and tranquility with which they are viewed in England

Question 3

Person

Answer 3

Written in third person to describe her friend, Don McCullin who was a war photographer

Question 4

Stazaic structure

Answer 4

• Four six line stanzas
• The very ordered nature of these stanzas contrast the chaos of the war and suffering he is portraying
• This shows the order he tries to bring through photography, and also the placidity with which people view and read the images back in England

Question 5

Metre

Answer 5

• Many lines are in iambic pentameter, though there are lots of irregularities
• It again shows how he is trying to enforce order on the chaotic scenes he is capturing, though sometimes this fails are they break out in an emotional way with whoever views the images

Question 6

‘In his darkroom he is finally alone’

Answer 6

• Adverb ‘finally’
• Shows he feels a sense of relief that he is finally alone, suggesting his recent experiences have been traumatic

Question 7

‘with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’

Answer 7

• Metaphor with silibance, highliting the elongated vowel sounds
• Juxtaposition of suffering ‘ordered rows’
• This creates a sense of a prodigious amount of suffering which is endless
• The ‘ordered rows’ hints at his indifference to the suffering as he has seen so much and is now bringing order to it so he can figure out how best to portray it

Question 8

‘The only light is red and softly glows’

Answer 8

• The red light, while necessary to produce photos has connotations of blood
• This represents the suffering and violence that is portrayed by the photographs being endless and everpresent
• However this is contrasted by it ‘softly glowing’, showing he the photographer is bringing order to it and is now in a completely different world to where it is taking place

Question 9

‘as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass’

Answer 9

• Begins the extended metaphor comparing him to a priest who is doing a holy and important ritual, that being bringing light to the suffering
• ‘Priest preparing’ is plosive alliteration showing the order he is bringing to the chaos
• The biblical allusion to ‘Mass’ compares the sacrifice of Jesus to the sacrifice of the people who have died allowing him to do his job

Question 10

‘Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.’

Answer 10

• Asyndetic list of places where suffering is occuring + tricolon
• The list makes the suffering seem endless and shows his indifference to the suffering between there is so much and he has seen so much
• The list of three short sentences represent his ordering of the suffering

Question 11

‘All flesh is grass’

Answer 11

• Biblical allusion
• Compares what he is doing to burying the dead at a funeral service, while also showing that he is bringing light to the people who have suffered
• It also highlights the transience of life

Question 12

‘He has a job to do’

Answer 12

• Short, simple sentence
• Creates a professional tone, showing he must carry out his work in a blunt and impassive way, and does so for the most part because he is so inured to suffering

Question 13

‘Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands, which did not tremble then though seem to now’

Answer 13

• Sibiliance
• Shows he is only nervous now when he actually has to confront what he has captured, not when he is capturing because he has seen so much suffering
• This could be because it is now his turn to create and distribute images, whereas before he was simply observing and capturing

Question 14

‘. Rural England.’

Answer 14

• Two caesuras on either side
• Shows how sheltered and protected Rural England, where these images are viewed is which is a direct juxtaposition to the suffering and violence which is about to be described

Question 15

‘Home again’

Answer 15

• Shows the guilt he feels by being in such a sheltered place after seeing so much suffering
• The word ‘again’ shows the cyclical nature of his job

Question 16

‘ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel’

Answer 16

• Two adjectives describing the mundane
• Reinforces his role as somebody bringing light to suffering and showing those who live a sheltered life real pain

Question 17

‘of running children in a nightmare heat’

Answer 17

• Emotive language and metaphor
• The metaphorical nightmare represents how their experiences are literally nightmarish, yet it is ironic because they never wake up from them
• The ‘heat’ is an allusion to the napalm girl, which makes it even more emotive and will instantly evince pathos from the reader

Question 18

‘a stranger’s features’

Answer 18

• The adjective ‘stranger’s’ denotes otherness
• This shows his indifference to and separation from the suffering he sees

Question 19

‘a half-formed ghost’

Answer 19

• Metaphor
• Makes the man seem insignificant and lacking uniqueness, further showing how much suffering he has seen and the indifference he feels towards individual people as a result

Question 20

‘to do what someone must’

Answer 20

• ‘Must’ is a modal verb
• This shows that he feels he has a moral, or maybe even religious obligation to do the work that he is doing

Question 21

‘and how the blood stained into foreign dust’

Answer 21

‘Foreign dust’ is otherly and non-specific, showing how the suffering is separate from us and we are out of touch with it

Question 22

‘A hundred agonies’ and ‘five or six’

Answer 22

• Large, ambiguous number juxtaposed with a smaller number
• Shows the extent of suffering but how only a curated view are chosen, highlighting the sensationalistic nature of his work and how so much goes unseen

Question 23

‘Sunday’s supplement’

Answer 23

• Sibiliance and connotations of leisure
• Creates a gentle tone, juxtaposing the experiences of the reader with the experiences of the people in the photographs

Question 24

‘The reader’s eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers’

Answer 24

• Juxtaposition between ‘tears’ and ‘between the bath and pre-lunch beers’
• Shows that they only feel temporary sympathy, but do not really care as they never have to experience the suffering themselves and live a comfortable life
• The rhyme in the same line show the speed at which they move on

The description of English comforts further juxtaposes the horrors of war described earlier in the poem

Question 25

‘and they do not care’

Answer 25

• ‘They’ is an ambiguous pronoun
• This shows that they are an unspecified mass of people, creating a defeated tone due to how he feels nobody will ever truly care despite his work to bring light to the suffering
• The word ‘care’ is end-focused to show how he wants people to care

This shows that his cyclical efforts to bring light to suffering are futile, and the poem can essentially now repeat