Whatever Happened? ☆ Flashcards
1
Q
What is ‘Whatever Happened’ about?
A
- Speaker’s attempt to make sense of an ambiguous trauma. Attempts to dismiss and compartmentalize it, but the consequence lives in the subconscious and becomes more complex.
2
Q
‘At once whatever happened starts receding’
A
- Desire to immediately reduce and distance trauma.
3
Q
‘we line the rail With trousers ripped, light wallets, and lips bleeding’
A
- Listing: Describes violent, ambiguous trauma - creates a more universal point to relate to.
- Desire to reimpose order and structure.
4
Q
‘Yes, gone, thank God!’
A
- Colloquial language - tone of relief.
5
Q
‘All’s kodak-distant.’
‘Easily then (though pale)’
A
- AO3 Photography
- Attempts to reduce trauma to a photograph to make sense of and dismiss it.
- Parenthesis shows the truth/reality. Not so easy to dismiss, the trauma still exists to trouble/sicken us (pale)
6
Q
‘Perspective brings significance, we say’
A
- Pompous, pseudo-philosophical language mocks the desire of society to rationalise or intellectualise our trauma/
7
Q
‘latitude: the map’
‘coastal bedding’
A
- Technical language - attempts to define and factually explain his trauma via logic to understand and control it.
8
Q
‘Curses? The dark? Struggling?’
A
- Incomplete, incoherent questions - jarring tone.
Change in language from structured to questioning outbursts. Implies uncertainty/anxiety.
9
Q
’ Where’s the source of these yarns now (except in nightmares, of course)? ‘
A
- Metaphorical. Double meaning of yarn/story. His trauma is tangled and complex - difficult to make sense of.
- Spent so long rationalising and dismissing that can no longer locate the beginning.
10
Q
Rhyme Scheme of Whatever Happened:
A
- Terza Rima (3 line interlocking rhyme scheme) - symbolises speaker’s attempt to control and compartmentalize trauma. Eventually broken in final two lines, represents how painful memory cannot be repressed.
11
Q
A03?
A
- Patsy Strange - poetic version of affair?
