War Photographer: Carol Ann Duffy (1985)

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

• 2 of her friends were war photographers

- Duffy’s fascination with what makes someones do such a job

Question 2

Form and Structure

Answer 2

• Contains Iambic pentameter, hexameter and tetrameter: changing state of war, although still stressed
• ABAB rhyme scheme for first 2 stanzas
• Enjambent: chaos of war

Question 3

‘A hundred agonies in black-and-white’

Answer 3

• Colour symbolism
• oxymoron of black and white
• The scenes are feelingless and merely factual, not given enough recognition

Question 4

‘All flesh is grass’

Answer 4

• Metaphor
• Biblical reference
• Suggests all human life is just temporary
• or flesh is stepped on as mindlessly as grass

Question 5

‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’

Answer 5

• Sibilance + metaphor: an image of a horrible scene of graves/bodies in ordered rows
• spools of suffering/ordered rows

Question 6

3 quotes

Answer 6

‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’

‘A hundred agonies in black-and-white’

‘All flesh is grass’