War Photographer by Carole Satyamurti Flashcards
The speaker introduces their core point at the start of the poem
“The reassurance of the frame is flexible / - you can think that just outside it / people eat, sleep, love normally / while I seek out the tragic, the absurd, / to make a subject.” (1 - 5)
The speaker contrasts how viewers can disbelieve that societies are as bad as pictures suggest they are, while believing positive images reflect the truth
“Or if the picture’s such as lifts the heat / the firmness of the edges can convince you / this is how things are” (6 - 8)
The speaker describes two privileged girls in what is presumably a developed, peaceful country to contrast this with the suffering others face
”- as when at Ascot once / I took a pair of peach, sun-gilded girls / rolling, silk-crumpled, on the grass / in champagne giggles” (9 - 12)
The suffering of a small girls in a war zone is described, showing her immense responsibility in caring for a baby
”- as last week, when I followed a small girl / staggering down some devastated street, / hip thrust out under a baby’s weight. / She saw me seeing her; my finger pressed.” (13 - 16)
The danger of war is directly shown in the second half of the poem, and the girl’s actions show how people follow their survival instincts
“At the corner, the first bomb of the morning / shattered the stones. / Instinct prevailing, she dropped her burden / and, mouth too small for her dark scream, / began to run…” (17 - 21)
The final stanza shows irony as the picture shown to people is much more pleasant that in reality, and the reader actually knows what truly happened
“The picture showed the little mother / the almost-smile. Their caption read / ‘Even in hell the human spirit / triumphs over all.’ / But hell, like heaven, is untidy, / its boundaries / arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall.” (22 - 28)
