Climate ChangeQuote ExplanationAdapted from an article published in The Guardian newspaper supplement – Science Course Part III: The Earth (In association with the Science Museum)

The idea of an authority figure giving out information. There are facts about climate change, but we don’t know what climate change is. There are facts and only facts because it is an factual topic

The subject of global warming has become impossible to ignore.

The line already suggest that we already know what global warming and climate change. It also suggest that its is occuring and there is no disputes about it. The article says that both climate change and global warming are facts.

Today global warming has become a political hot potato and the majority of scientists agree that it is a reality and here to stay.

We see that assumption that global thing and most scientists agree. We don’t know who these scientists are but it seems that we should believe because what they say are facts.

Over the past 200 years mankind has increased the proportion of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, primarily by burning fossil fuels. The higher levels of greenhouse gases are causing our planet to warm – global warming

First we learn that the idea of global warming and greenhouse gases is a natural process and it is not our fault. However, instead of asking the question “Is mankind really to blame?” The author seems to think and wants to make us think that mankind is really at fault for the problem of global warming.

Since 1958 scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii have taken continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The levels go up and down with the seasons, but overall they demonstrate a relentless rise.

First we see that the author is accusing humans as the cause of global warmng and then she disguises it by asking the question by asking if we are to blame. Then, in order to make us believe her, she says that these authority figures, ie. scientists are saying that temperatures are going up to make it sound more urgent such as “relentlessly” to make it seem that there is nothing we can do to stop it.

However the rate of change that we see today is exceptional: carbon dioxide levels have never risen so fast. By 2000 they were 17% higher than in 1959.

Here we see that the narrator keeps a contrast between the natural rises of temperature in the past and the one now. The one in the past was clearly something that occurred naturally, there was not a lot of fluctuation; it was merely the Earth’s natural way of regulating itself. But as humans began to put these greenhouse gases in the air, levels have risen so we see that the author is attempting to do is to make us feel that we are responsible by giving us all the facts that make it sound like we are responsible.

There is little doubt that humanity is responsible for the rapid rise in carbon dioxide levels…

First the author makes it seem like it is a scientific inquiry that she is conducting. She suggests that it could be or couldn’t be by asking us questions

and giving us facts that seem to suggest it is humanity’s fault. However, she does not fully come out to say that it is actually our fault. She seems to previously ask us to decide for ourselves. However, now we see that instead of being a scientific inquiry into the question of whether global warming is caused by humans, the author has already made up her mind and he therefore wants the readers to agree with her.

Most people agree… She says “most peoeple agree” but that doesn’t mean all people agree. She doesn’t talk about the minority and instead tries to make them majority of the people sound like the logical and that the minority are merely in denial. The fact that she also uses the phrase “it is too much of a coincidence”, she tries to make us think that it is a logical conclusion.

Estimates from some of the world’s best climate scientists – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…

So here we see that in addition having most everybody, who are logical, agree with her, she also has the world leading scientists that are saying that the global temperature will keep going higher. Even though we don’t know if they agree with her or simply just stating the facts, by linking her own opinion with the scientists’ numbers, he is attempting to suggest that they do agree with her. But whether this is actually the case, we don’t know.

Whether it will be the lower or upper end of this estimate is unclear. Currently, oceans and trees are helping to mop up some of the heat by absorbing carbon dioxide, but eventually they will reach capacity and be unable to absorb more.

Previously, he gave us a range of estimates to demonstrate how much global temperatures would have risen according to these scientists. So, to create further ambiguity to make us more likely to believe her, he suggests that in spite of the range we were given, we don’t know if it will be in the high one or the low one. To inpsire more fear, he tells us some optimistic news and then promptly kills our hope.

“No. Carbon dioxide is just one of a number of greenhouse gases, which include water vapour, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. Livestock farming (farting cows) and rice paddy farming (rotting vegetation) have contributed to higher levels of methane in the atmosphere.”

The narrator continues to try to scare us by telling us that carbon dioxide levels are not the only thing we have to wroory about. In fact, to further highlight her point that it is humanity’s fault, he tells us that even the way we try to grow our own food affects the environment, thus, it is no longer just a issue of creating of methods of convenience for us but also just really our fault for being there, for trying to survive .

“…nasty sting to its tail.” As a scientific article, ther kind of language should not be used. However, he does use it, which suggests that he is trying to emphasize her own opinion that it is all humanity’s fault and to emphasize the impact that we have had due to our way of life. By using desciriptive words in her scientific article, we are more likely to be fearful of our effect and more likely to agree with her.

“If the oceans warm sufficiently they could melt…”

“…the result is likely to be more extreme weather.”

“…commited to an average gloval temperature rise of nearly 1C, lasting for at least the next 500 years”

At the end, he suggests that because of our carelessness, we have caused a rise in global temperature which has therefore triggered certain tipping points that would in the end, cause us to suffer extreme weather. All of ther, according to the author, is all our fault. It is our fault that we have cause global warming and that it is our fault that we will experience extreme weather. Clearly, the purpose of ther supposedly-scientific article is not to be scientific. We are given facts which the author has stringed together with her opinion so that we will think that what we are getting is only facts when in reality, we are actually getting some facts and some opinions.

[diagram] To simplify and illustrate her point.Diagram 1&2:The diagram serves to simplify the point she made preivously and to allow us to get a simpler picture of what she suggests happens in the natural process. Ther is used to convince readers of her points. By simplifying with a diagram and a picture, we are more likely to understand the natural process she was described previously. By applying the pessimistic view that she has given us, we are therefore able to imaging the oustanding effects that we have had on the temperature on the earth.

Diagram 3:In diagram 3 we see that the author has very conscientiously divided up the emissions of gases that contribute ot global warming. By doing so, she is giving us a simplified picture of her article. The graphs also highlight her point. She gives us three different estimates by the IPPC: low, medium and high. She does not tell us how likely each scenario would be. Like in her article, we are forced to assume the worst.

Taking on the WorldLine ExplanationI climbed the mast on Christmas Eve, and though I had time to get ready, it was the hardest climb to date. I had worked through the night preparing for it, making sure I had all the tools, mouselines

We know that she has problems with her boat and we know that she came second despite problems with her boat. The significance of Christmas Eve is that it is a Christmas miracle. By using technical terms, she’s letting the

and bits I might need, and had agonized for hours over how I should prepare the halyard so that it would stream out easily below me and and not get caught as I climbed

readers know that she’s experienced.

When it got light I decided the time was right. I kitted up my middle-layer clothes as I didn’t want to wear so much that I wouldn’t be able to move freely up there. The most dangerous thing from falling off is to be thrown against the mast, and though I would be wearing a helmet it would not be difficult to break bones up there…

This paragraph creates suspense as the readers learn that it is possible to break bones up there and that it is a solo sail, making it all the more dangerous.

…I felt almost as if I was stepping on to the moon – a world over which I had no control.

The metaphorical comparison to the moon suggests to the reader that it is alien to her. Therefore, as readers, we are scared for her because she probably does not have much experience in this area.

…But it got harder and harder as I was not only pulling my weight up as I climbed but also the increasingly heavy halyard…

We see that climbing the mast highlights the fact that she is alone. The boat is described as cold and emotionless and if she is in trouble, no one is there to help her

By the third spreader* I was exhausted; the halyard was heavier and the motion more violent. I held on to her spreader base and hung there, holding tight to breathe more deeply and conjure up more energy. But I realized that the halyard was tight and that it had caught on something. … I knew that if I went down to free it I would not have the energy to climb up once again. I tugged and tugged on the rope — the frustration was unreal. It had to come, quite simply the rope had to come free. Luckily with all the pulling I managed to create enough slack to make it to the top, but now I was even more exhausted. I squinted at the grey sky above me andwatched the mast-head whip across the clouds. The wind whistled past us, made visible by the snow that had begun to fall. Below the sea stretched out for ever, the size and length of the waves emphasized by this new aerial view. This is what it must look like to the albatross.

The point of her using all these jargons are to demonstrate that she is an experienced sailor and we learn that for her, this is a difficult task. The fact that she runs into these problems and troubles during her sail suggest that it is a very difficult task, even for an experienced sailor.The falling snow highlights the fact that there is now more danger. By using falling snow, MacArthur emphasizes how more dangerous the job has now becom. The contrast represents the alien and foreging thing that she is doing, similar to the moon metaphor.

I rallied once more and left the safety of the final spreader for my last hike to the top. The motion was worse than ever, and as I climbed I thought to myself, not far now, kiddo, come on, just keep moving … As the mast-head came within reach there was a short

She uses “kiddo” in this paragraph when she is talking to herself like a parent to a child when the parent is encouraging. This demonstrates how alone she is and she wants encourage herself.

moment of relief; at least there was no giving up now I had made it— whatever happened now I had the whole mast to climb down. I fumbled at the top of the rig, feeding in the halyard and connecting the other end to the top of Kingfisher’s mast. The job only took half an hour — then I began my descent. This was by far the most dangerous part and I had my heart in my mouth — no time for complacency now, I thought, not till you reach the deck, kiddo, it’s far from over…It was almost four hours before I called Mark back and I shook with exhaustion as we spoke. We had been surfing at well over 20 knots while I was up there. My limbs were bruised and my head was spinning, but I felt like a million dollars as I spoke on the phone. Santa had called on Kingfisher early and we had the best present ever — a new halyard.

We are reminded that this is Christmas miracle. Not only MacArthur had a new halyard but also that she managed to climb up and down the mast safely.

Touching the voidQuote Explanation[Title] It’s called ‘Touching the Void’ because there is nothing there and you are

basically touching nothing.I hit the slope at the base of the cliff before I saw it coming. I was facing into the slope and both knees locked as I struck it. I felt a shattering blow in my knee, felt bones splitting, and screamed. The impact catapulted me over backwards and down the slope of the East Face. I slid, head-first, on my back. The rushing speed of itconfused me. I thought of the drop below but felt nothing. Simon would be ripped off the mountain. He couldn’t hold this. I screamed again as I jerked to a sudden violent stop.

He’s is describing this as it happens so this is his thought-pattern when it happens. The first sentence basically says that what happened to Joe does not seem to have been planned. Mountain climbing is unpredictable and often relies on the person’s physical instinct. Joe basically felt the impact before he could plan for it and before he could react. These last lines shows that even though he goes through the pain, most of his thoughts are of his friend, Simon. He thinks much of what would happen if Simon was ripped off the mountain. Cleary this first paragraph which establishes the tone of Joe’s account which literally follows as they come.

Everything was still, silent. My thoughts raced madly. Then pain flooded down my thigh — a fierce burning fire coming down the inside of my thigh, seeming to ball in my groin, building and building until I cried out at it, and my breathing came in ragged gasps. My leg! ... My leg!

Again we see the idea of a series of thoughts that goes throuhg joe’s head. The sibilance of ‘still, silent’ suggests almost a pause in the sudden rush of events that happened. This contrast with the second phrase “my thoughts raced madly’. While everything around Joe has stopped for a moment, his own thoughts are “raced” rapidly. This highlights the fact that Joe has slowly come to the realization, as we will see later on in this paragraph, that he has broken his leg. The exclamation represents Joe’s sudden realization that something awful has happened to him. The fact that it hashappend at the end of the 2nd paragraph emphasizes how Joe seems to think more so of Simon rather than of himself.

I hung, head down, on my back, left leg tangled in the rope above me and my right leg hanging slackly to one side. I lifted my head from the snow and stared, up across my chest, at a grotesque distortion in the right knee, twisting the leg into a strange zigzag. I didn’t connect it with the pain which burnt my groin. That had nothing to do with my knee. I kicked my left leg free of the rope and swung round until I was hanging against the snow on my chest, feet down. The pain eased. I kicked my left foot into the slope and stood up.

Although he has come to realize that something that has happneed to his leg, it does not seem that Joe’s mind has not yet caught up to his injury but he only notes that his right leg was caught in an odd zigzag. The cacophony of “grotesque distortion” highlights how entirely out of place his leg was, almost as if it doesn’t represent his leg at all. The description of the leg twisting into a “strange zigzag” again emphasizes how detached the leg has seem to become. The fact that Joe is not yet able to connect the pain with the twisted leg seems to suggest that the pain has fogged his brain and things had happened so fast that he is not yet able to catch up. The cliffhanger at the end of the paragraph asks the readers a question: if his leg is twisted, how can he stand up?

A wave of nausea surged over me. I pressed my face into the snow, and the sharp cold seemed to calm me. Something terrible, something dark with dread occurred to me, and as I thought about it I felt the dark thought break into panic: ‘I’ve broken my leg, that’s it. I’m dead. Everyone said it … if there’s just two of you a broken ankle could turn into a death sentence … if it’s broken … if … It doesn’t hurt so much, maybe I’ve just ripped something.’

The ellipsis in this paragraph emphsizes Joe’s slow realization that his leg has potentially broken. He knows that it is a death sentence but even then, he remains optimistic.

I kicked my right leg against the slope, feeling sure it wasn’t broken. My knee exploded. Bone grated, and the fireball rushed from groin to knee. I screamed. I looked down at the knee and could see it was broken, yet I tried not to believe what I was seeing. It wasn’t just broken, it was ruptured, twisted, crushed, and I could see the kink in the joint and knew what had happened.

Here we see that Joe is trying to comfort himself. He knows that if his knee was broken, it would mean that it would be a death sentence to both he and Simon. The immediate contrast with the next line “my knee exploded” creates a feeling of sudden realization and clarity. Because tension was built up in the previous paragraph, with Joe telling us that it would be a death sentence if one of them got injured. The entire paragraph focuses on

The impact had driven my lower leg up through the knee joint. … Joe’s knee. Even though he tries to ignore the fact that he has broken his leg, the pain that occurs is impossibel to ignore. Not only that, the description , the tripling “ruptured, twisted, crushed” shows just how badly he has broken his knee.

I dug my axes into the snow, and pounded my good leg deeply into the soft slope until I felt sure it wouldn’t slip. The effort brought back the nausea and I felt my head spin giddily to the point of fainting. I moved and a searing spasm of pain cleared away the faintness. I could see the summit of Seria Norte away to the west. I was not far below it. The sight drove home how desperately things had changed. We were above 19,000 feet, still on the ridge, and very much alone. I looked south at the small rise I had hoped to scale quickly and it seemed to grow with every second that I stared. I would never get over it. Simon would not be able to get me up it. He would leave me. He had no choice. I held my breath, thinking about it. Left here? Alone? … For an age I felt overwhelmed at the notion of being left; I felt like screaming, and I felt like swearing, but stayed silent. If I said a word, I would panic. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of it.

This last paragraph represents the way that Joe writes in that he follows a trail of thought. IT also highlights the fact that in one moment, everything could change. The seering spasm of pain not only cleared Joe’s faintness but also cleared his head to the awful realizaiton that Simon would have to leave. The two questions create tension in the paragrpph. Although Joe understands that Simon could not possibly carry him over the mountain, at the same time, he is incredibly afraid of being left alone because he knows that he would almost certainly die. The picture of Joe “teetering” on the edge of panic, also creates a parallel image of Joe teetering on his one good leg. This image emphasizes again how precarious Joe’s situation is.

Joe had disappeared behind a rise in the ridge and began moving faster than I could go. I was glad we had put the steep section behind us at last. … I felt tired and was grateful to be able to follow Joe’s tracks instead of breaking trail*.

Simon’s sacccount seems to be more structured than Joe’s. Instead of being a train of thought, Simon tries to recount what has happened.

I rested a while when I saw that Joe had stopped moving. Obviously he had found an obstacle and I thought I would wait until he started moving again. When the rope moved again I trudged forward after it, slowly.

This creates tension, basically. The first two paragraphs were slow in order to create tension before the disaster happened. Simon also seems to be less emotionally connected to Joe and instead seems to place practicality above anthing else. Thus the tension that is created culminates in the accident that is waiting to happen in the third paragraph.

Suddenly there was a sharp tug as the rope lashed out taut across the slope. I was pulled forward several feet as I pushed my axes into the snow and braced myself for another jerk. Nothing happened. I knew that Joe had fallen, but I couldn’t see him,so I stayed put. I waited for about ten minutes until the tautened rope went slack on the snow and I felt sure that Joe had got his

The ‘suddenly’ emphasizes that the accident has happened. Again we see that Simon’s account of the accident seems to be a lot more cold than Joe’s because he wasn’t the one involved in the accident and maybe because he was just that kind of person. Here we see that even though clearly something has happened to Joe, he doesn’t bring up his name. He instead focuses on practical things. We also see that he tries to be as well

weight off me. I began to move along his footsteps cautiously, half expecting something else to happen. I kept tensed up and ready to dig my axes in at the first sign of trouble.

prepared as possible.

As I crested the rise, I could see down a slope to where the rope disappeared over the edge of a drop. I approached slowly, wondering what had happened. When I reached the top of the drop I saw Joe below me. He had one foot dug in and wasleaning against the slope with his face buried in the snow. I asked him what had happened and he looked at me in surprise. I knew he was injured, but the significance didn’t hit me at first.

It is only in the fourth paragraph, does Simon begin to wonder about joe. Prior to that, we see that Simon merely gives us a more concrete and chronological account of the events that he sees prior to and during the accident. The language that Simon uses is very simplistic and there is a certain lack of emotion in comparsion with Joe’s. Even though we might at first think that Simon is cold, but actually, Simon focuses less on himself but more on the surroundings and what he can do to help him. Joe, on the other hand, focuses more on himself as well. Throughout the accident, Simon seems to remian calm while Joe experiences emotional upheaval. Even though, Joe’s broken leg could mean a death sentence to Simon should he choose to remain by his friend’s side, he not only doesn’t panic, he also is able to see the practicality of finding out what’s wrong before making any conclusions.

He told me very calmly that he had broken his leg. He looked pathetic, and my immediate thought came without any emotion. … You’re dead … no two ways about it! I think he knew it too. I could see it in his face. It was all totally rational. I knew where we were, I took in everything around me instantly, and knew he was dead. Itnever occurred to me that I might also die. I accepted without question that I could get off the mountain alone. I had no doubt about that.

… Below him I could see thousands of feet of open face falling into the eastern glacier bay. I watched him quite dispassionately. I couldn’t help him, and it occurred to me that in all likelihood he would fall to his death. I wasn’t disturbed by the thought. In a way I hoped he would fall. I knew I couldn’t leave him while he was stillfighting for it, but I had no idea how I might help him. I could get down. If I tried to get him down I might die with him. It didn’t frighten me. It just seemed a waste. It would be pointless. I kept staring at him, expecting him to fall …

We see that Simon isn’t cold-hearted but his practicality makes him seem so. Simon seesms to think that he is able to get off the mountain alone and understands that if he tries to help his friend, he too would die. We see the first sign of compassion in the last paragraph. He does not want to kill his friend by cutting the rope but if he doesn’t and his firend doesn’t fall, it would mean that Simon too will also die. In his head, he thinks that it would be pointless not because he wants to survive but if both of them die. The ellipsis at the end of the last paragraph is the first instance we the crack in the venear of Simon’s regularity. However, we also get the contrast with the fact that Simon is incredibly cold. The fact that he watches Joe “dispassionately” while he hangs there with a broken leg suggests that Simon is in fact extremely logical and reasonable. By being able to gather the information about the situation and analyse them, Simon is able to process it and try to come up with a solution. In this instance, he cannot cut his firned loose but at the same time he knows they cannot stay in this position forever, he tries shirk the responsibility that includes the decision to cut Joe loose. Instead of being able to make the decision, Simon expects Joe to fall so that he takes no responsibility.

The Explorer’s DaughterQuote Explanation“As a small child, Kari Herber lived, with her family, among the Inughuit (sometimes called Eskimos) in the harsh environment of the Arctic…”

This is the introduction to the author as it tells she has a special priveliged. This means that she has some special ties with the people there. So we know that she has a view on the hunt as she describes here and she has a different perspective on this.

“Two hours after the last of the hunters had returnedand eaten, narwhal were spotted again…”

That means that two hours ago, they already returned. You could assume that maybe all of them failed in harpooning a narwhal and they had to return to eat. They might have not expected narwhal to be spotted again.

“…even those of us on the shore could with the naked eye see the plumes of spray from the narwhal catching the light in a spectral play of colour.”

That basically the highlights the fact that the narwhal were really close. The imagery that is presented here gives a kind of haunting and phermeral quality to the narwhal. Because they migrate down so rearrely, narwhal are considered to be a very rare and important part of the Eskimo’s lives.

“…glittering kingdom in front of me and took a sharp intake of breath…eveinglight was turning butter-gold, glinting off man and whale and catching the soft billows of smoke from a lone hunter’s pipe.”

Those two imageries tell you the time of day is probably late evening as the sun is setting and gives a fairy-tale like quality to the hunt of narwhal. They are seen in the author’s eyes as something magical as it is rarely seen and when they do appear, they are very much admired and coveted.

“Distances are always deceptive in the Arctic…wondering if the narwhal existed at all or were instead mischievous tricks of the shifting light…”

This already introduces to the fact that when you are in the artic, you cant trust your naked eye. However, the sighting of the narwhal was seen with the naked eye and the author has given it a fairytale-like quality, we begin to wonder if the narwahl in this passage do not in fact exist. Because the author seems to describe it as mythical creatures, it seem to her that she could be so lucky to see two larghe pods of narwhal.

“…dead of winter…” Again this gives the narwhal mysterious qualities. Because we don’t see what the narwhal does in the High Artic waters where temperatures are inhospitable to man. When they do leave in the dead of winter, we begin to wonder if they are escaping something and begin to personify the narwhal more.

[Paragraph3- 4] The tone of this passage suddenly deviates from the previous one. We are introduced to the narwhal as mysterious, mythical creatures, the author now suddenly decides to give us more factual information. Ellipsis do not mean anything. Because this is an extract from a longer passage, this is to shorten to parts that the exam requires reading.

“The narwal…is an essential contributor to the survival of the hunters in the High Arctic…worn down or even broken from such usage.”

“Mattak” is, we can assume, is some Inuit word or some specialised term. This reminds us of the author’s childhood amongst the Inuit which is important because we are most likely to trust her opinion.

[Paragraph 4] This paragraph gives a interesting perspective. The narwhal doesn’t seem to be useful for itself but rather the people around it. It almost seems that author seems to justify the narwhal hunt. Since she has introduced them as mythical creatures, readers will be more sympathetic towards the narwhal. However, because she is also trying to explain that the hunting of the narwhal is essential, and therefore to create a less biased passage, she now seems to try to tell us that humans, especially the Inuit, has more use for the narwhal and that they do not waste any single part of the narwhal.

“…small ancient dwellings…” This suggests suggest that this ritual has gone on for a very long time.“The women clustered on the knoll of the lookout, binoculars pointing in every direction, each woman focusing in her husband or family member, occasionally spinning round at a small gasp or jump as one of the women saw a hunter near a narwhal.”

They are clustered together because everyone wants to see their husband or family member. Each woman is watching out for her husband because she is still nervous that he might not return.

“It was like watching a vast, waterborne game with the hunters spread like a net around the sound.”

Again we have this feeling that seeing things with the naked eye in the Arctic was deceptive. The imagery of which the author is trying to create is that of unity. The narwhal move in unison and the hunters all act as a team.

“…they talk to one another under the water…” Again we are given a brief moment of factual information. Now the author seems to be trying to say that the narwhal are not dumb creatures that man hunts. Again she is also trying to justify the hunting of the narwhal.

One hunter was almost on top of a pair of narwhal, and they were huge. He gently picked up his harpoon and aimed — in that split second my heart leapt for both hunter and narwhal. I urged the man on in my head; he was so close, and so brave to attempt what he was about to do — he was miles from land in a flimsy kayak, and could easily be capsized and drowned. The hunter had no rifle, only one harpoon with two heads and one bladder. It was a foolhardy exercise and one that could only inspire respect. And yet at the same time my heart also urged the narwhal to dive, to leave, to survive.

This paragraph creates a lot of tension. This fragmented sentences suggested that author was writing this down as she was thinking and portrays that split-second dilemma that she has as well. It also sums up her view of the hunt, that is, while she admires the Inuit for living almost entirely off the land, at the same time, she also feels a connection to the animals that they hunt. Although she knows that it essential for their survival, for the animal, it means death. The last phrase is a tripling “to dive, to leave, to survive”, ‘to dive” means that the narwhal to dive, “to leave” suggests that the narwhal has to leave , and “to survive” suggests that if the narwhal doesn’t do any of them, it will die.

“The dilemma stayed with me…” Again this emphsaiszes that she is conflucted over the hunting of artic animals. Because she understands the neccessity of hunting in order to survive in the harshness of the environment, she is able to sympathesize with the hunters. However, at the saem time she also understands everyone else’s understanding that they should be protected. Despite the animals being part of the Inuit’s diet, she also feels that such machinery hunting of animals is also cruel.

“True, the images that bombarded us several years ago of men battering seals for their fur hasn’t helped to issue of polar hunting, but the Inughuit do not kill seals using this method, nor do they kill for sport.”

Here the author is trying to differentiate between these regularn hunters who only want to make a profit out of one thing and the Inuit who genuinely want to survive. As we can see before, the Inuit are generally good a making use of every part of the animal.

“They use every part of the animals they kill, and most of the food in Thule is still brought in by the hunter-gatherers and fishermen…Hunting is still an absolute necessity in Thule.”

Here the author seems to make a decision in that she tries to justify in the hunting of anmal. She understands that while the hunters are able to access food, it is not enoguh to sustain them all year long. Thus, she seems to be suggesting that hunting is absolutely necessary as long as you’re not hunting for sport.

A game of polo with a a Headless GoatQuote Explanation[Title] It is called so because she is a researcher who likes to go aroudn

discovering unusual sports. SO, that could be actually be a sport that she might find the most unusual. The author likes to film unusual sports because to her, it is very exciting.

We drove off to find the best viewing spot, which turned out to be the crest of the hill so we could see the approaching race. I asked the lads if we could join in the ‘Wacky Races’ and follow the donkeys, and they loved the idea. ‘We'll open the carboot, you climb inside and point your camera towards the race. As the donkeys overtake us, we'll join the cars.’ ‘But will you try and get to the front?’ ‘Oh yes, that’s no problem.’

The first paragraph captures the reader’s attention because Levine wants to find the “best viewing spot’. We arent introduced to what the race is and the language that the author uses is also very chatty so it creates a sense of familiarity with the reader.

The two lads who had never been interested in this Karachi sport were suddenly fired up with enthusiasm. We waited for eternity on the brow of the hill, me perched in the boot with a zoom lens pointing out. Nearly one hour later I was beginning to feel rather

The importance of the sport being named “Karachi sport” in this paragraph gives a sense of exoticness, The lads are suddenly excited because the author is writing about this and they are excited to be a part of this. It feels like “an eternity” because they were very bored because the only thing she

silly when the only action was a villager on a wobbly bicycle, who nearly fell off as he cycled past and gazed around at us.

saw was a vilager on a wobbly bicycle.

Several vehicles went past, and some donkey-carts carrying spectators. ‘Are they coming?’ we called out to them. ‘Coming, coming,’ came the reply. I was beginning to lose faith in its happening, but the lads remained confident.

Just as I was assuming that the race had been cancelled, we spotted two approaching donkey-carts in front of a cloud of fumes and dust created by some fifty vehicles roaring up in their wake. As they drew nearer, Yaqoob revved up the engine and began to inch the car out of the lay-by. The two donkeys were almost dwarfedby their entourage; but there was no denying their speed — the Kibla donkey is said to achieve speeds of up to 40 kph, and this looked close. The two were neck-and-neck, their jockeys perched on top of the tiny carts using their whips energetically, although not cruelly.

The next two paragraphs’ tone is very factual and technical as she is introducing the race. Tension is built up and she gets the readers excided about the race itself. She specifically mentions the Kibla donkey to give a sense of ecitement and exoticness to the readers so that their curiosity can be piqued.

The noise of the approaching vehicles grew; horns tooting, bells ringing, and the special rattles used just for this purpose (like maracas, a metal container filled with dried beans). Men standing on top of their cars and vans, hanging out of taxis and perched on lorries, all cheered and shouted, while the vehicles jostled to get to the front of the convoy.

The onomatapoeia is used to make the scene more lifelike and to engage the readers so that they feel like they are part of the race. She uses personification of the cars because she couldn’t see the drivers driving the car so she automatically personifies the cars trying to get ahead as “jostling”.

Yaqoob chose exactly the right moment to edge out of the road and swerve in front of the nearest car, finding the perfect place to see the two donkeys and at the front of the vehicles. This was Formula One without rules, or a city-centre rush hour gone anarchic; a complete flouting of every type of traffic rule and common sense.

The author compares this to Formula One and the city centre to allow the readers to picture what the driving was like by comparing it common things and also to emphasize how the fast the driving was and how crowded it was.

Our young driver relished this unusual test of driving skills. It was survival of the fittest, and depended upon the ability to cut in front of a vehicle with a sharp flick of the steering wheel (no lane discipline here); quick reflexes to spot a gap in the traffic for a couple of seconds; nerves of steel, and an effective horn. There

We see that the young lads are suddenly interested in the race because they like the car race. Yaquoob is the fittest and the author makes this comparison because he has aot of skill and the ability to adapt. Not only this but the drivers are animalistic and chaotic.

were two races — the motorized spectators at the back; in front, the two donkeys, still running close and amazingly not put off by the uproar just behind them. Ahead of the donkeys, oncoming traffic — for it was a main road — had to dive into the ditch and wait there until we had passed. Yaqoob loved it. We stayed near to the front, his hand permanently on the horn and his language growing more colourful with everyvehicle that tried to cut in front. …The road straightened and levelled, and everyone picked up speed as we neared the end of the race. But just as they were reaching the finishing line, the hospital gate, there was a near pile-up as the leading donkey swerved, lost his footing and he and the cart tumbled over. The race was over.

And then the trouble began. I assumed the winner was the one who completed the race but it was not seen that way by everyone. Apart from the two jockeys and'officials' (who, it turned out, were actually monitoring the race) there were over a hundred punters who had all staked money on the race, and therefore had strongopinions. Some were claiming that the donkey had fallen because the other one had been ridden too close to him. Voices were raised, fists were out and tempers rising. Everyone gathered around one jockey and official, while the bookmakers were tryingto insist that the race should be re-run.

The fact that the people argue about the race being unfair shows that the people and the country they are in is uncivilized.

Yaqoob and Iqbal were nervous of hanging around a volatile situation. They agreed to find out for me what was happening ordering me to stay inside the car as they were swallowed up by the crowd. They emerged sometime later. ‘It’s still not resolved,’ said Iqbal, ‘but it's starting to get nasty. I think we should leave.’ As we drove away, Yaqoob reflected on his driving skills. ‘I really enjoyed that,’ he said as we drove off at a more sedate pace. ‘But I don't even have my licence yet because I'm underage!’

They both found this hilarious, but I was glad he hadn’t told me

The ending is a twist and Levine is shocked to learn that her driver was didn’t even have a licence because he was underage.

before; an inexperienced, underage driver causing a massive pile-up in the middle of the high- stakes donkey race could have caused problems.

Chinese CinderellaQuote ExplanationChinese Cinderella What we think about this title is that the narrator of this story has a life

like Cinderella, she is mistreated by her family, no money, and is treated like a servant without any means of escaping.

Growing up in a wealthy family in 1950s Hong Kong, Adeline Yen Mah should have had an enviable childhood, but she was rejected by her dominating stepmother and despised by her brothers and sisters. She was sent to a boarding school and left there. In this extract from her autobiography she relates one of the few occasions when she went home.

In this short blurb, she is not like Cinderella at all. Even though her stepmother and siblings don’t have good relationship with her, she comes from a weatlhy family which is able to afford an education for her especially in the 1950s where only the wealthy would send both their sons and daughters to school.

Time went by relentlessly and it was Saturday again. Eight weeks more and it would be the end of term … in my case perhaps the end of school forever.

The first paragraph sets the tone of foreboding. She doesn’t want school to finish but time goes on quickly especially when she wants to slow down. As readers, we don’t know yet why she may have to leave school forever but given the introducation to what we know about her family, it is possible that they don’t wish to pay for her education any longer.

Four of us were playing Monopoly. My heart was not in it and I was losing steadily. Outside it was hot and there was a warm wind blowing. The radio warned of a possible typhoon the next day. It was my turn and I threw the dice. As I played, the thought of leaving school throbbed at the back of my mind like a persistent toothache.

We don’t know who these four people are but we know they are not her siblings because they apparenlty don’t despise her. The description of the weather that it was hot and a possible typhoon, serves to foreshadow some impending disaster. The line “thought of leaving…toothache.” The simile here also foreshadows some impending disaster. The thought of being away at the community she is comfortable in worries her. It is something that she is constantly being reminded of. It is also a little strange to not that this fear of hers is compared to a toothache. If she truly does not want to leave school, it seems to be the pain of leaving school is more than just a toothache.

‘Adeline!’ Ma-mien Valentino was calling. We can assume that she is staying somewhere temporarily, maybe in a

‘You can’t go now,’ Mary protested. ‘For once I’m winning. One, two, three, four. Good! You’ve landed on my property. Thirty-five dollars, please. Oh, good afternoon, Mother Valentino!’We all stood up and greeted her.‘Adeline, didn’t you hear me call you? Hurry up downstairs! Your chauffeur is waiting to take you home!’

boarding school. We don’t know who Mother Valentino is but we can see that she is an authority figure. She is in charge of whereever it is they are staying at and now we learn that Adeline is supposed to be going somewhere but we don’t know where.

Full of foreboding, I ran downstairs as in a nightmare, wondering who had died this time. Father’s chauffeur assured me everyone was healthy.

Now we see that when she goes home, or perhaps the last time she went home, someone has died. We see that she lives seperately from her family. Clearly going home usually is not associated with a good experiencee. Given the relationship we know she has with her family, perhaps this time she is going home, she will be also be taken out of school which would explain why she would not want her term to finish.

‘Then why are you taking me home?’ I asked. Now we see how weatlhy her family actually is. She seems to be whining about her broken relationship with her family when they are able to afford sending her to a boarding school and a chauffeur. This is the first instance in this extract that we begin realize that she might be possibly victimizing herself.

‘How should I know?’ he answered defensively, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. They give the orders and I carry them out.’

The chauffeur’s attitude to her seems to suggest she is not of high priority in her house. In general we would assume that as a chauffuer they would have to be respectful to the family that has hired him. Given that her father seems to be distant authroity figure and that her stepmother and siblings dislike her, it seems that chauffuer has also picked up that he does not need to be respectful to Adeline. This is the first instance we see in this extract of her ostricization from the family.

During the short drive home, my heart was full of dread and I wondered what I had done wrong.

Here we see that clearly that every time she goes home to speak to her father, it usually means that something negative has happened. It suggests that in the past, she has gone to see him is when she has done wrong. All he cares about is when she displeases him and doesn’t care when she pleases him. Essentially what she is suggesting is that he does not acknowledge her achievements but only her failures.

Our car stopped at an elegant villa at mid-level, halfway up the hill between the peak and the harbour.

Again this is an example of how wealthy she is. In 1950s Hong Kong, her family is able to afford a Mid-Level house. This is equivalent to living in Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side in the US. Her continuos mentions

of her weatlhy family seems to serve her point that despite the wealth, she does not feel like a welcome member in her own family.

‘Where are we?’ I asked foolishly.‘Don’t you know anything?’ the chauffeur replied rudely. ‘This is your new home. Your parents moved here a few months ago.’

Her ignorance of knowing they moved highlights the estranged realtionship she has with them. As she does not seem to meet or speak to them very often, she is like a stranger in her own home. The rudeness of the chauffeur suggests that she is not considered a part of the main family and being an outsider, gives her less rights than the servant.

Ah Gum opened the door. Inside, it was quiet and cool.‘Where is everyone?’‘Your mother is out playing bridge. Your two brothers and Little Sister are sunbathing by the swimming-pool. Your father is in his room and wants to see you as soon as you get home.’

Her coming home after being away for so long does not warrant any kind of celebration. Her mother is not home and her father doesn’t even greet her but instead summons her to his room.

‘See me in his room?’ I was overwhelmed by the thought that I had been summoned by Father to enter the Holy of Holies — a place to which I had never been invited. Why? …

Again we see an example of her strained relationship with her father. Her father, to her, is some kind of authority figure so great as to be compared to some kind of a god. The repition of “holy” in “Holy of Holies” served to emphasize just how great his power over her is. Essentially, he could decide her future.

Timidly, I knocked on the door. Father was alone, looking relaxed in his slippers and bathrobe, reading a newspaper. He smiled as I entered and I saw he was in a happy mood. I breathed a small sigh of relief at first but became uneasy when I wondered why he was being so nice, thinking, Is this a giant ruse on his part to trick me? Dare I let my guard down?

The feear she has of her father is demonstrated by how timidly she knocks on his door suggests that he is less of father and daughter and more of employer and employee. His father is someone who could make or break her future carreer as we have already seen should he choose to pull out of school and there is no one else in the family who would stand up for her.

‘Sit down! Sit down!’ He pointed to a chair. ‘Don’t look so scared. Here, take a look at this! They’re writing about someone we both know, I think.’

When we are first introduced to her father, we, as readers, are also relieved with her. With the image we have previously of her father, the contrast now between him being an imposing figure and now as a family man is the first positive description that we have see n since the beginning of this excerpt. Clearly then, she is not in trouble or so we think.

‘Sit down! Sit down!’ He pointed to a chair. ‘Don’t look so scared. Here, take a look at this! They’re writing about

Her uneasiness clearly stems from her past experiences with her father. She has always been uneasy because she was not close to him. She

someone we both know, I think.’ always has her guard up aroudn him which is the contrast between her in the beginning when she was playing Monopoly and now when she is meetin with her father.

He handed me the day’s newspaper and there, in one corner, I saw my name ADELINE YEN in capital letters prominently displayed.

Now we know why her father summoned her. Given what we know about him so far, it seems that he is not calling her over because he is proud of her but because she has achieved soemthing he could brag about. In this instance, having her name in the newspaper. We could therefore assume that she has accomplished something good rather than bad.

‘It was announced today that 14-year-old Hong Kong schoolgirl ADELINE JUN-LING YEN of Sacred Heart Canossian School, Caine Road, Hong Kong, has won first prize in the International Play-writing Competition held in London, England, for the 1951—1952 school year. It is the first time that any local Chinese student from Hong Kong has won such a prestigious event. Besides a medal, the prize comes with a cash reward of FIFTY ENGLISH POUNDS. Our sincere congratulations, ADELINE YEN, for bringing honour to Hong Kong. We are proud of you’

This is the first time we are introduced to Adeline from a third party person. Clearly, she seems to be a very talented writer. Her accomplishment at a pretigious third party event has attracted the attention of her father. We also learn that the school that she goes to is a local boarding school which in 1950s Hong Kong, makes her acheivement all the more greater.

Is it possible? Am I dreaming? Me, the winner? Given her worrying about having to see her family, it seems that she herself does not even realize that she has won so prestigious a competition. Perhaps that we can also say that this is due to all the years with her family where she was considered insignificant and ignored. Her surprise here demonstrates that instead of concentrating on her achievements, she is more worried about having to see her family.

‘I was going up the lift this morning with my friend C.Y. Tung when he showed me this article and asked me, “Is the winner Adeline Jun-ling Yen related to you? The two of you have the same uncommon last name.” Now C.Y. himself has a few children about your age but so far none of them has won an international literary prize, as far as I know. So I was quite pleased to tell him you are my daughter. Welldone!’

Here we see that her father is proud of her and her achievement because as the, according to her, ignored daughter, she is the one who has accomplished soemthing that no one else has yet. So, the portrati she is painting for us as readers of her father is one that is calculating and extremely practical. Now that she is of use to him, he summons her to his office because he sees that she is of worth to him in front of his colleagues.

He looked radiant. For once, he was proud of me. In front of his revered colleague, C.Y. Tung, a prominent fellow businessman also from Shanghai, I had given him face. I thought, Is this the big moment I have been waiting for? My whole being vibrated with all the joy in the world. I only had to stretch out my hand to reach the stars.

The description she uses her whole being “vibrated” with anticipation suggests the level of her excitement. Clearly in the past, she has not done anythign that her father considers worthy. In this instacne, we see that despite the way that he treats her, to her, he is still someone she aims to please. However, she does not seem to feel the same way about her stepmother.

‘Tell me, how did you do it?’ he continued. ‘How come you won?’

Even though his father is pleasantly surprised that she won, he doesn’t seem to believe that she has the capabilities to win such a prestigious prize.

‘Well, the rules and regulations were so very complicated. One really has to be dedicated just to understand what they want. Perhaps I was the only one determined enough to enter and there were no other competitors!’

Her answer her does nto seem to credit her own talent but she tries to downplay it and instead tries to emphasize her own personaliyt trait; that of determination.

‘Please, Father,’ I asked boldly, thinking it was now or never. ‘May I go to university in England too, just like my brothers?’

Clearly her dream is to go to university, an important queistion for a girl to ask in the 1950s. The question that she asks represent two things:

1) Her family is extremely wealthy and can afford to send her to England

2) She has been planning for this for some time and seize her winnning the prize as a leverage.

‘I do believe you have potential. Tell me, what would you study?’

The fact that he sees her potential because she has won a prize suggests that he might not necessarily that horrible of a father that Adeline makes him out to be. Given the time period, it would have been difficult for women to attend university if they did not have talent. Again, if her parents were less welathy, she would not be able to go to boarding school even less than asking to go to university.

‘I do believe you have potential. Tell me, what would you study?’

This line shows that her father, because he never expected her to become anything, now expects her to decide her own fate. However, she herself also has not thought about her future. As the ignored child in her father’s family, she always, as we have seen previously, altered between seeking her father’s approval and apprehensive about going home. Thus, we see that her decision to study creative writing is based solely on the fact that she has just won a writing competition.

‘I plan to study literature. I’ll be a writer.’ Here we see the contrast between traditional values and Western

‘Writer!’ he scoffed. ‘You are going to starve! What language are you going to write in and who is going to read your writing? Though you may think you’re an expert in both Chinese and English, your Chinese is actually rather elementary. As for your English, don’t you think the native English speakers can write better than you?’

values. Adeline clearly has some interest in literature and English and she believes that she should be able to pursue her interest. Her father, on the other hand, represent traditional Chinese values and also doesn’t have faith in her talent. He thinks that being a writer automatically means that she will starve. Furthermore, he believes that she is not actually as talented as she thinks she is.

‘You will go to England with Third Brother this summer and you will go to medical school. After you graduate, you will specialise in obstetrics. Women will always be having babies. Women patients prefer women doctors. You will learn to deliver their babies. That’s a foolproof profession for you. Don’t you agree?’

Again we see that the reiteration fo Chinese values. To be a doctor automatically means success. Studying medicine and becoming a doctor is as symbol of status and practicality. Because her father doesn’t have faith in her talents, he believes that she requires a “foolproff professsion” to always keep her in a job. Thus, instead expecting her to be like a neurosurgeon, he expects her to be a medically-trained midwife. Again, we see that no one in her family thinks highly of her. She is not considered smart or intelligent. However, if she proves herself, her father will reward her accordingly. For Adeline, this is yet another exampl on how she is unfairly treated in her family. Despite her family’s wealth, she is considered an outcast. Her brothers are able to go to school in England but she must first demonstrate her potential and make her father proud before she can go to university.

Agree? Of course I agreed. Apparently, he had it all planned out. As long as he let me go to university in England, I would study anything he wished.

Again we realize that she doesn’t have much of a say in this matter. Here we see that Adeline is also as simple and innocent as we first believe her to be. She wants to go to school in England so, despite the fact that she has more interest in literature than medicine, she will agree to anything her father says as long as it will get her to her end goal.

How did that line go in Wordsworth’s poem? Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

Here we see an element of irony. Her father wants her to study medicine in university, however, the first line that comes into her head is a quote from Wordsworth’s poem. This is further emphasized by the fact that she is indeed now a writer as opposed to the doctor that her father wanted her to be.

‘Father, I shall go to medical school in England and become a doctor. Thank you very, very much.’

This is representative of the idea that despite being treated by her father as someone who is unable to do anything, she still has to thank him for the privilege of going to school because she doesn’t have it, unlike her siblings.

A passage to AfricaQuote ExplanationI saw a thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces as I criss-crossed Somalia between the end of 1991 and December 1992, but there is one I will never forget.

As he goes all across Somalia, he sees so many who are “hungry, lean” that they all just blur into one and becom a statistic. This is characteristic of the idea that as the numbers get higher and higher, people and individuals become merely a statistic but in the auhtor’s eyes, as we will see, there is one that is just a little bit different from the other thousands.

I was in a little hamlet just outside Gufgaduud, a village in the back of beyond, a place the aid agencies had yet to reach. In my notebook I had jotted down instructions on how to get there. ‘Take the Badale Road for a few kilometres till the end of the tarmac, turn right on to a dirt track, stay on it for about forty-five minutes — Gufgaduud. Go another fifteen minutes approx. — like a ghost village.’ …

It’s so desolate and remote that it seems so hard to reach. Even though he is jotted down how to get there, even the way there is remote and lonely. The whole village is so far away from civilization is almost like a ghost villages. The simile suggests how few the people of the little hamlet are.

In the ghoulish manner of journalists on the hunt for the most striking pictures, my cameraman … and I tramped from one hut to another. What might have appalled us when we'd started our trip just a few days before no longer impressed us much. The search for the shocking is like the craving for a drug: you require heavier and more frequent doses the longer you're at it. Pictures that stun the editors one day are written off as the same old stuff the next. This sounds callous, but it is just a fact of life. It's how we collect and compile the images that so move people in thecomfort of their sitting rooms back home.

The imagery created here demonstrates that these journalists will stop at nothing to find the perfect picture. The word “ghoulish” suggests how perdect they would fit in the ghost village. This comparison of requiring more and more shocking pictures in order to create an emotion in viewers back home emphasizes how difficult it is for people to sympathesize and empathesize with people they don’t understand. The simile in this paragraph show how easy it is for people to completely misintepret the suffering even though the pictures are not shocking enough.

There was Amina Abdirahman, who had gone out that morning in search of wild, edible roots, leaving her two young girls lying on the dirt floor of their hut. They had been sick for days, and were reaching the final, enervating stages of terminal hunger. Habiba was ten years old and her sister, Ayaan, was nine. By the time Amina returned, she had only one daughter. Habiba had died. No rage, no whimpering, just a passing away — that simple, frictionless, motionless deliverance from a state ofhalf-life to death itself. It was, as I said at the time in my dispatch, a vision of‘famine away from the headlines, a famine of quiet suffering and

These two examples demonstrates how even though the author tries to create for us suich a vibrant image in his eyes, these images were not picture-worthy because they contained no shock value. The lonely quiet of dying by yourself is not attention-grabbing to the rest of the world. Instead, mesthese faces must suffer forever in silence and forever unknown. It becomes just another face among thousands and these people become another statistic. For these nameless faces, suffering and death is part of their everyday lives, one that they have to go over again and again but one that no one knows.

lonely death’.

There was the old woman who lay in her hut, abandoned by relations who were too weak to carry her on their journey to find food. It was the smell that drew me to her doorway: the smell of decaying flesh. Where her shinbone should have been there was a festering wound the size of my hand. She’d been shot in the leg as the retreating army of the deposed dictator … took revenge on whoever it found in its way. The shattered leg had fused into the gentle V-shape of a boomerang. It was rotting; she was rotting. You could see it in her sick, yellow eyes and smell it in the putrid air she recycled with every struggling breath she took.My reaction to everyone else I met that day was a mixture of pity and revulsion*. Yes, revulsion. The degeneration of the human body, sucked of its natural vitality by the twin evils of hunger and disease, is a disgusting thing. We never say so in our TV reports. It’s a taboo that has yet to be breached. To be in a feeding centre is to hear and smell the excretion of fluids by people who are beyond controlling their bodily functions. To be in a feeding centre is surreptitiously* to wipe your hands on the back of your trousers after you’ve held the clammy palm of a mother who has just cleaned vomit from her child’s mouth.

The reptition ‘revulsion’ seems to strengthen the resolve of the author whose job is the take pictures of people in this condition, is barely able to contian their dignity in this condition. The description of how the human body degenrates as it is literally eaten alive by hunger and disease demonstrates two things: in the author’s eyes, it emphasizes the frailty of human life and the insatiable hunger of famine and war.

There’s pity, too, because even in this state of utter despair they aspire to a dignity that is almost impossible to achieve. An old woman will cover her shrivelled body with a soiled cloth as your gaze turns towards her. Or the old and dying man who keeps his hoe next to the mat with which, one day soon, they will shroud his corpse, as if he means to go out and till the soil once all this is over.

The way the author says ‘there’s pity too..’ the casual way that the author says this suggests that he has seen this often. Although it is true there is pity involved, it almost seems sacrileigous that in such extreme conditions, the most the author can muster is a sense of pity.

I saw that face for only a few seconds, a fleeting meeting of eyes before the face turned away, as its owner retreated into the darkness of another hut. In those brief moments there had been a smile, not from me, but from the face. It was not a smile of greeting, it was not a smile of joy — how could it be? — but it was

This smile of apology affects the author in such a way that it acknowledges the fact that these people languish. This nameess man admits and is apologetic at being caught in such a condition because he acknowledges that in a previous life, he would have been able to properly greet the journalist. This is the kind of smiel that makes the narrator wonder if he has

a smile nonetheless. It touched me in a way I could not explain. It moved me in a way that went beyond pity or revulsion.

What was it about that smile? I had to find out. I urged my translator to ask the man why he had smiled. He came back with an answer. ‘It's just that he was embarrassed to be found in this condition,’ the translator explained. And then it clicked. That's what the smile had been about. It was the feeble smile that goes with apology, the kind of smile you might give if you felt you had done something wrong.

done that he too should be ashamed of. As someone who is meant to document the horrors of war, the author is instead only able to look more and more extreme snapshots of people who are suffering instead of telling their stories.

Normally inured* to stories of suffering, accustomed to the evidence of deprivation, I was unsettled by this one smile in a way I had never been before. There is an unwritten code between the journalist and his subjects in these situations. The journalist observes, the subject is observed. The journalist is active,the subject is passive. But this smile had turned the tables on that tacit agreement. Without uttering a single word, the man had posed a question that cut to the heart of the relationship between me and him, between us and them, between the richworld and the poor world. If he was embarrassed to be found weakened by hunger and ground down by conflict, how should I feel to be standing there so strong and confident?

The unspoken ritual is about realism. He is documenting real life albeit the real life that is not stereotyped but real life nonetheless. However, once his subject has become aware and ashamed of himself, the author no longer has control. Instead, the subject is now able to influene the picture by posing for it which no longer allows the photographer to document what he sees as real.

I resolved there and then that I would write the story of Gufgaduud with all the power and purpose I could muster. It seemed at the time, and still does, the only adequate answer a reporter can give to the man's question.

The man is trying to ask the photographer not to take a photo of him. He doesn’t want the photographer to take a photo of him because he is embarrassed at being weak, hungry, poor, disease-ridden, desperate, frail, hopeless and most importantly, he is humiliated he is useless to a family that he could’ve had and he is useless at defending his country and protecting himself.

I have one regret about that brief encounter in Gufgaduud. Having searched through my notes and studied the dispatch that the BBC broadcast, I see that I never found out what the man's name was. Yet meeting him was a seminal moment in the gradual collection of experiences we call context. Facts and figures are the easy part of journalism. Knowing where they sit in the great

Facts and figures are easy because if you give them a number, readers don’t feel anything. What this man remidned the auhtor of is what it means to be human. There is not connection between the journalist and the subject, one is looking for more and more things to shock readers with but there is no empathy behind it.

scheme of things is much harder. So, my nameless friend, if you are still alive, I owe you one.

Explorers, or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue billQuote Explanation“Explorers, or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayers gets rescue bill”

The title of this article seems to be suggesting a very fine line between being a considerate explorer or just immature. However, either one of them will never ever pay for their own expeditions and usually come from the funding from taxpayers. As we will see from this article, this fine line compells taxpayers that they too have accomplished something or just angry and irritated that they have to pay.

“Their last expedition ended in farce when the Russians threatened to send in military planes to intercept them as they tried to cross into Siberia via the icebound Bering Strait.”

We are are introduced to them as people who are immature. The choice of the word “farce” shows that these people are laughable, thus, the article has biased readers into taking these men not seriously.

“Yesterday a new adventure undertaken by British explorers Steve Brooks and Quentin Smith almost led to tragedy when their helicopter plunged into the sea off Antarctica.”

Now we are introduced to their names which makes them more personable than if we have no name to identify them with.

“The men were plucked from the icy water by a Chilean naval ship after a nine-hour rescue which began when Mr Brooks contacted his wife, Jo Vestey, on his satellite phone asking for assistance. The rescue involved the Royal Navy, the RAF and British coastguards.”

The use of the word “plucked” suggest that they were not important enough to merit such a huge rescue operation. Furthermore, this rescue operation also involved another country. You would expect that such a huge rescue operation would be for people who are in trouble. However, we see that in fact, these men seem to be fine and “plucked” from a Chilean naval ship.

“Last night there was resentment in some quarters that the men’s adventure had cost the taxpayers of Britain and Chile tens of thousands of pounds.”

Each paragraph in this article seems to be making fun of the duo. This one, in particular, show that they are completely irresponsible for their mistakes and cost a lot of people a lot of money for their problem.

“Experts questioned the wisdom of taking a small helicopter –the four-seater Robinson R44 has a single engine – into such a hostile environment.”

This paragraph, in fact, suddenly tries to seperate the men from experts by telling us that these men are inadequate.

“There was also confusion about what exactly the men were trying to achieve. A website set up to promote the Bering Strait expedition claims the team were planning to fly from the north to

The “trusty helicopter” put in direct quotes suggest that it was a direct quote from the men. Furthermore, the point of this expedition was not even clear, again, distinguisiing thiem from real explorer. The obvious clue is

south pole in their ‘trusty helicopter’.” that real explorers had an obvious purpose rather than these men.“But Ms Vestey claimed she did not know what the pair were up to, describing them as ‘boys messing about with a helicopter’.”

Even his wife does not want to take responsibility. The description of them as a “boys messing about with a helicopter” gives a name the article and to her, they seem to be immature and does not seem to warrant the involvement of the Royal Navy, the RAF, British coastguards as well as the Chilean navy.

“The drama began at around 1am British time when Mr Brooks, 42 and 40-year-old Mr Smith, also known as Q, ditched into the sea 100 miles off Antarctica, about 36 miles north of Smith Island, and scrambled into their liferaft.

“Q” refers to the joker in James Bond and does not refer to the joker in a good way. Instead of being a villain, it is used ironically. Furthermore, the use of “the drama began” suggests that no one even took them seriously.

“Mr Brooks called his wife in London on his satellite phone. She said: ‘He said they were both in the liferaft but were okay and could I call the emergency people?’”

The lack of panic from both of them suggests that this has happened many times before. The fact that Mr Brooks has a satellite phone, seems to take his exploring seriously and thus, such failed expedition has happened before.

“Meanwhile, distress signals were being beamed from the ditched helicopter and from Mr Brooks’ Breitling emergency watch, a wedding present.”

This seems to suggest that they were expecting this to happen. Because this is a wedding present, it suggest that he’s been like this even before he got married. If distress signals were being beamed from the helicopter, it means that it was installed beforehand, which suggests that they were expecting to not succeed.

“The signals from the aircraft were deciphered by Falmouth coastguard and passed on to the rescue coordination centre at RAF Kinloss in Scotland.”

This suggest that a lot of people were involved in saving these two people.

“The Royal Navy’s ice patrol ship, HMS Endurance, which was 180 miles away surveying uncharted waters, began steaming towards the scene and dispatched its two Lynx helicopters.”

This paragraph is interesting because it is a comparison between real exploring and whatever these men were doing. The Royal Navy’s ice patrol ship were trying to find something and map out uncharted waters and these men interrupted what was seen as important work with their mishap.

“One was driven back because of poor visibility but the second was on its way when the men were picked up by a Chilean naval vessel at about 10:20am British time.

Though the pair wore survival suits and the weather at the spot where they ditched was clear, one Antarctic explorer told Mr Brooks’ wife it was ‘nothing short of a miracle’ that they had survived.

Basically this suggest that these two men are nothing short of stupid, their adventure’s failure and their subsequent survival were not depended on their skills but rather sheer dumb luck.

“Both men are experienced adventurers.” The first line of this paragraph suggest that they are not explorers but merely like the take part in high-adrenaline adventures so they are experienced in taking part in dangerous activities. However, it does not neccesssarily mean that they are experienced explorers.

“Mr Brooks, a property developer from London, has taken part in expeditions to 70 countries in 15 years. He has trekked solo to Everest base camp and walked barefoot for three days in the Himalayass. He has negotiated the white water rapids of the Zambezi river by kayak and survived a charge by a silver back gorilla in the Congo. He is also a qualified mechanical engineer and pilot.

This shows that Mr Brooks is actually qualified in manning a helicopter. However, the fact that they have an accident, shows that in fact, they are not good at planning their adventures but merely taking part in dangerous and foolhardy activities to satisfy their adrenaline rush.

“Mr Smith, also from London, claims to have been flying since the age of five. He has twice flown a helicopter around the gloabe and won the world freestyle helicopter flying championship.”

Mr Smith sems to be a little less experienced that mr Brooks in that he claims to have been flying for some time, which in many people’s eyes, would seem unrealistic. However, it is not disputed that he knows how to fly a helicopter and this paragraph gives proof that he knows how to operate one.

“Despite their experience, it is not the first time they have hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.”

Despite the fact that they both seem to qualified in terms of skill, none of them are qualified in terms of intelligence.

“In April, Mr Brooks and another explorer, Graham Stratford, were poised to become the first to complete a crossing of the 56-mile wise frozen Bering Strati between the US and Russia in an amphibious vehicle, Snowbird VI, which would carve its waythrough ice floes and float in the water in between.

But they were forced to call a halt after the Russian authorities told them they would scramble military helicopters to lift them off the ice if they crossed the border.

Ironically, one of the aims of the expedition, for which Mr Smith provided air back-up, was to demonstrate how good relations between east and west have become.”

The introduction of the Snowbird VI suggest that they have the technology, so it is likely for them to complete the mission. However, at the same time, they are not using enough equipment to successfully complete a mission. Firstly, in that using a amphibious vehicle, although technologically advanced, seems to be not a good choice for a 56 mile wide crossing of the Bering Strait. Furthermore, it demonstrates their lack planning. Although the relations between the UK and Russia has improved, because they did not contact the authorities prior to the crossing , they would have, in fact in breach of a country’s borders. Thus, the Russians turned them back.

“The wisdom of the team’s latest adventure was questioned by, among otheres, Günter Endres, editor of Jane’s Helicopter Markets and Systems, said: ‘I’m surprised they used the R44. I

These two contrasting paragraphs suggest that experts, in general, do not seem to agree with the equipment that the pair have been using. They are seen as insufficient and inadequate for a such an level of adventure. The

wouldn’t use a helicopter like that to go so far over the sea. It sounds as if they were pushing it to the maximum.

A spokesman for the pair said it was not known what had gone wrong. The flying conditions had been ‘excellent’.”

fact that Endres says that the pair seems to be “pushing it to the maximum” suggests that none of them were actually qualified to “push it to the maximum” because the both of them have also been on adventures and expeditions around the world, they think that they are good at judging whether the helicopter is sufficient or not but other people around them seems to evaluate more clearly the helicopter that they took.

“The Ministry of Defence said the taxpayer would pick up the bill, as was normal in rescues in the UK and abroad. The spokesperson said it was ‘highly unlikely’ it would recover any of the money.

Last night the men were on their way to the Chilean naval base Eduardo Frei, where HMS Endurance was to pick them up. Ms Vestey said: ‘They have been checked and appear to be well. I don’t know what will happen to them once they have been picked up by HMS Endurance – they’ll probably have their bottoms kicked and sent home the long way.’”

The last line demonstrates the fact that they are bothe immature. Futhermore, the fact that none of them are paying for their mishaps, suggest that they won’t take any responsibility for their money.

Themes Throuhout the article, we constantly see that comparison between being mature and responsible and just messing about. While it’s true that they are both qualified in their adventuring, the author continues to try to make a point that these men are not in fact qualified to be making decisions about their adventures and the kinds of equipment they need to bring. Thus, we see that them ajor thmeses of this article is maturity and responsibility to society.

The NecklaceQuote Explanation“She was one of those pretty, delightful girls” She’s not special as the author makes her to seem as one of them but the

author has not answered what made her worthy of the story.“…apparently by some error of Fate.” The use of the word “apparently” suggest that she feels that because she is

pretty and charming she is not at fault for being born poor. In other words, this provides us a contrast: the author tells us that she is not special but the author makes us percieve that she is important enough to make Fate make

her poor.“She dressed simply…good family who has come down in the world.”

These next two lines describe how she is poor in the sense that she is a victim of Fate. But is she not actually poor even though she is not living a life of poverty. In this paragraph, we see her delusion. Again in the first line, “she dressed simply”. This does not mean she is dressed in rags . She is of middle-class but she thinks of herself as being robbed of coming from a wealthy family.

“…a girl of no birth to speak of may easily be the equal of any society lady.”

We see that although she is born into a poor family,she thinks that her beauty, grace, charm and elegance means that she is automatically deserves a high-class ranking and a wealthy husband to support her.

“She was made unhappy…sad regrets and impossible fancies.”

Repeating what we know. The description of her apartment seems to be the description of a middle-class apartment. Seeing as she is nothing more than a young Breton peasant. It seems that she has already married above her station. The irony here is that she thinks that her doing household chores are a spectacle and that even though she is only a peasant girl, she deserves a life of luxury. The confusing bit is when she would “weep tears of regret” Why would she do this when Fate assigned her to a lowly role?

“ She dreamed of silent antechambers…attentions were much coveted and desired by all women.

We see a contrast between the reality of her life and the life she dreams in her head. The description of her reality, represents the way she sees it: it’s bare, simple and seemingly poor. However, the world of her dreams is filled with richness and beautiful vivid odors.

“When she sat down to dinner at the round table…pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a hazel hen.”

Here we are also introduced to her husband for the first time. In her eyes, he belongs to this grey and dull life. He is clearly not one of the “men of the day” she dreams about and desires, even though she is married. However, we also see a contrast between her and her husband. She continuosly despises the life of the middle-class while he seems to appreciate the little things that he sees as wonderful in his life like the stew.

“She had no fine dress, no jewellery, nothing…popular, envied, attractive and in demand.”

Her idea of “nothing” is that she had nothing that the rich had. Here we see how superficial she is. All she cared about was superficial material goods such as being popular, envied, desired by many.

“She had a friend …regret, despari, and anguish.” She is clearly envious of her rich friend, who she sees as being of her station but was somehow was able to become wealthy.

“One evening her husband came home looking highly pleased with himself.”

We see a glimpse of the husband’s characted in this passage. Although he himself desires the simple things in life, he continues to find things to please

his wife. By showing her the invitation, he hopes that the newws will make her happy.

“She looked at him irritably and said shortly; ‘And what am I supposed to wear if I do go?’”

We see that the reason that she is upset about the invite because she feels that even though she has the opportunity to mingle with rich she doesn’t want to appear poor. Seeing that she does not have the right dress, she feels unworthy of the invitation.

“He had not thought of that. He blustered: ‘And what am I supposed to wear if I do go?’”

Although tries so hard to please his wife, he does not understand the things she desires, which is not only to mingle the wealthy, but it is also to be or appear to be a member of the wealthy.

“He turned slightly pale, for he had been setting aside just that amount to buy a gun and finance hunting trips the following summer…”

Again we see how much he is willing to sacrifice to please his wife. His money was set aside for a gun so he could spend some time with his friends on a hunting trip. However, he is able to put his pleasure aside if it means that he could make his wife happy.

“The day of the reception drew near and Madame Loisel appeared sad, worried, anxious.”

Now we see that she doesn’t just dream of marrying above her station but that as a young, pretty peasant girl, she somehow deserves the life of nobility. More specifically she desires the material goods that being nobility will gain her.

“’It vexes me that I haven’t got a single piece of jewellery, not one stone…I’ll look like a church mouse.’”

As soon as she is able to gain a little bit of her fantasies, she immediately wants more as her imaginings turn into reality. She is constantly displeased with the way she percieves her life and is constantly desiring for a life of endless wealth. She seems to become sad for very trivial matter such as obtaining a piece of jewellery and does not notice all that her husband has done for her so far.

“’Wear a posy,’ he said, ‘It’s all the rage this year. You could get two or three magnificent for ten francs.’”

Her husband clearly believes his ife would be all right as to wear something that is seen as currently as fashionable. What she desires is not to be fashionable but to appear as wealthy and aristocratic. Her perception of the wealthy is that they adorned themselves with jewels rather than fashion trends.

“’You’re right! I never thought of that!’” Madame Forestier is the childhood friend Madame Loisel doesn’t wish to see because she feels inferior to her friend. However, now that Madame Loisel has secured a difficult to obtain invitation, she feels that she could be of more equal standing.

“Madame Forestier went over to a mirror-fronted wardrobe, took out a large casket, brought it over,

Not dissimiliar to her husband, Madame Forestier doesn’t seem to care so much about her material goods, in this example, her jewellery. She is willing

unlocked it, and said to Madame Loisel: ‘Choose whatever you like,’”

to help out her friend and doesn’t care which piece of jewellery Madame Loisel desires to borrow.

“She tried on the necklaces in the mirror, and could hardly bear to take them off and give them back. She kept asking: ‘Have you got anything else?’”

Madame Forestier’s generosity extends to the point where she trusts Madame Loisel and sees her as a childhood friend. She doesn’t think that Madame Loisel is inferior and is willing to lend her any possible jewels that she could want. However, Madame Loisel comes across as greedy because even though she has so many jewels to choos from, the only one she wants is the most expensive and therefore, to her, the most deserving of her.

“…immoderate desire. Her hands shook as she picked it up.”

Even though she has seen all those beautiful jewels that she doesn’t possess, the diamond is the one that catches her attention. It represents to her all that she dreams about and therefore, all that she desires. Thus, in the process of choosing her jewellery, it can be said to be an analogy between the life between the life she has with her husband and the life she has in her head.

“…sat looking at herself in rapture.” Because the necklace represents to her a symbol of the wealthy she wishes she had, the simple act of being able to put it on meant that to her, the dream had come true. We can see that in the way she sees herself in the mirror, “in rapture”, clearly shows how superficial her wants and her desires are.

“The day of the reception arrived…She was even noticed by the Minister himself.”

In this paragraph, we see that she is obviosly basking in the attention of her many suitors but the one person she doesn’t seem to have danced with is her husband who she seems to have discarded. Her only happiness comes from her feeling of living the life that she percieves the wealthy to live. We see another aspect of her character her which is that as soon as she has no more need of a person, she discards them. In other words, she is very much selfish.

“She danced estatically, wildly, intoxicated…is so sweet to a woman’s heart.”

At this point, it seems that Madame Loisel’s dream have turned into reality. She is desired by many men, who she sees as superior to her husband and she herself is perceived to be a member of the upper-class. It is only by obtaining material goods is Madame Loisel happy. In other words, she is only happy when she is in the center of attention.

“…her husband had been dozing in a small empty side-room with three other men whose wives were having an enjoyable time.

She decided to leave at four in the morning, giving no regards to her husband who was sleeping in another room. Again, we have another reminder of how ordinary she is. She is not the onlyone who is self-centered

enough to forget about her husband. However extraordinary she sees herself to be, the reader is now reminded how ordinary she is.

“…a modest, everyday coat, a commonplace coat violently at odds with the elegance of the dress. It brought her down to earth.”

She is ashamed of her husband for being nothing more than ordinary. The reality of her and her husband is represented by the coat which doesn’t allow her to pretend that she is a member of the wealthy. The use of the word “violently” demonstrates her percieved victimization.

“…as if ashamed to parade their poverty in the full light of day.”

This can be used as an analogy for the way Madame Loisel feels about her own life. Again, this represents for her how impossible her dream of becoming wealthy is. It also represents how much of a victim she thinks herself is. Even in hailing a cab, she could only hail a poor cab.

“…rue des Martyrs.” The irony here as we will see later on is that Madame Loisel percieves herself as a martyr but her husband is the actual martyr. So the road they live on is fitting for the both of them

“For her it was all over,while he was thinking that he would have to be at the Ministry at ten”

Again we see the difference between the husband and wife. For her, her thoughts revolve around how she could keep her dream going. For him, it was the practical matters of his daily life. Even though he had to be at the Ministry at ten, he allowed his wife to stay until four in the morning because it mad her happy.

“’I’m going to go back the way we came,’ he said, ‘to see if I can find it.’ He went out. She remained as she was, still wearing her evening gown, not having the strength to go to bed, sitting disconsolotely on a chair by the empty grate, her mind a blank.”

Even though losing the necklace was her fault and not an instance of Fate, she does not even blame herself for the loss of the necklace and has no thought of her husband having to look for it in the middle of the night and having to get up early in the morning for work.

“…at about seven o’clock.” Again we are reminded how much her husband sacrifices for her. Even though he has to go to work in the morning, he does not ask her to go out with hime to look for the necklace.

“…tried anywhere with the faintest of hopes led him.” Again we see that Madame Loisel’s husband’s happiness and security of mind depends on her mood. Essentially his character is to support her whims and her fancies. In fact, he is willing to sacrifice everything for her. In this case, we see that he does not seem to have gone to his office and instead spent the day helping her find her necklace while Madame Loisel sat waiting at home for him.

“She wrote to his dictation.” Here we see that Madame Loisel for all her fancies, is essentially a useless character. Although during the time period, women are not given many

rights and were considered to be housewives only, Madame Loisel does not demonstrate and ounce of intelligence in solving her own problems.

“Loisel, who had aged five years…” “Although it seems that it is Madame Loisel’s fault, the fact that Mupassant has not mentioned anything that Madame Loisel has done to help shows that he sees Madame Loisel as an essentially useless character. Her husband has aged five years trying to deal with her problem while she herself has not attempted to solve.

“Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would have to borrow the rest…He mortgaged the rest of his life, signed papers without knowing if he would ever be able to honour his commitments, and then, sick with worry about the future, the grim poverty which stood ready to pounce, and the prospect of all the physical privation and mental torture ahead…””

Loisel is unable to deal with his wife. Her problems are his problems and her happiness are his happiness. By her unhappiness with the way things were in her life, he doesn’t give a thought as to how they would live if they were to give up their savings. Instead of making her tell her friend about losing the necklace, he is willing to help her remedy the situation giving no thought to his own personal happiness and wellbeing.

“If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she not have concluded she was a thief?”

Even though they are childhood friends, she does not seem to understand Madame Forestier very well because she is unable to judge how her friend will react. Instead, all of her questions are directed inwards.

“…quickly and heroically, she resigned herself to what she could not alter.”

Again we see how instead of even remotely placing the blame on herself, she tries to explain away her current situation as a twist of Fate. That has brought her to her current situation. This is the ultimate symbol of Madame Loisel’s delusions.

“Madame Loisel looked old now. She had turned into the battling, hard, uncouth housewife who rules working class homes. Her hair was untidy….and so admired.”

The irony of her situation now is that having truly dealt with poverty, her middle-class life in the past was not as poor as she herself believed. However, because of her fanciful desires she will now never even come close to the life she now has. By seeing herself as a tragic heroine, she is able to continue her everyday mundane existence

“What might not have happened had she not lost the necklace? Who could possibly tell? Life is so strange, so fickle! How little is needed to make or break us!”

Here we see a trend Madame Loisel thinks of herself. First, she sees herself as being a victim of Fate, as being born into a middle-class family. And now she sees herself as a tragic heroine forces to suffer the abject despair that being in poverty causes.

“Should she speak to her? Yes, why not? Now that she had paid in full, she would tell her everything. Why not? She went up to her.”

This is an example of pride Madame Loisel has to have when speaking to someone she feels inferior to. Previously, when she asked to borrow the necklace; her pride was that she was invited to such a party. Now, her pride

comes from the fact that she sees herself as a victim of Fate and that she is able to overcome it like a tragic heroine.

“’Yes. I’ve been through some hard times since I saw you, very hard times. And it was all on your account.’”

Again we see that Madame Loisel doesn’t take responsibility of the fact that she borrowed the necklace and lost it. Instead, her “heroic” struggles against Fate was indirectly caused by Madame Forestier.

“’Yes. And you never noticed the difference, did you? They were exactly alike.’ And she smiled a proud, innocent smile

Madame Loisel’s victimization in this situation is the fact that only she has to comfort herself. Her pride at being able to pay off all of her debt completely and to live in complete poverty is for her, a way of overcoming “tragice fate” that has befallen her which in her mind, was clearly no fault of her own.

“’Madame Forestier looked very upset and, taking both her hands in her, said: ‘Oh, my poor Mathilde! But it was only imitation necklace. It couldn’t have been worth much more than five hundred francs!...’”

The difference between Madame Loisel and Madame Forestier is evident in her concerns. Instead of feeling remotely happy that she was able to get a real diamond necklace out of having a fake, Madame Forestier is first and foremost concerned that her friend had to repay a debt for a necklace that she lost. Furthermore, Madame Forestier is perfectly content that she buys fake diamonds only for the purpose of matching her clothes. On the other hand, Madame Loisel thinks her friend is rich enough to not buy costume jewellery. Thus, we see here that Madame Loisel is controlled by the value that objects have in terms of their monetary value while Madame Forestier is not. Furthermore, in Madame Forestier’s admittance that the necklace was a fake, she has taken away Madame Loisel only hope in her poverty-stricken life. Specifically, her own personal victimization.

King Schariar and his brotherQuote Explanation“’The Arabian Nights’ (sometimes called ‘The Thousand and One Nights’) is the most famous collection of stories in the world. It was originally written in Arabic over a thousand years ago. ‘King Schahariar and his brother’ begins the cycle of stories and sets the scene for the rest.”

King Schahriar is the king of a country and he has lost his wife because she cheated on him, he didn’t trust women and decided to be extremely extreme. He understood that he should take wives because he is a king of a country and king should have his queen. Instead, he would spend a night with a woman and kill her in the morning. The introduction (blurb) tells us the kind of story we will be reading later and that it is a fiction story and assuming that it is the same format

that it is in the same format that this would have been told verbally before being written down.

“In the chronicles of the ancient dynasty of the Sassanidae, who reigned for about four hundred years, from Persia to the borders, beyond the great river Ganges itself, we read the praises of one of the kings of this race, who was said to be the best monarch of his time. His subjects loved him, and his neighbours [sic] feared him, and when he died he left his kingdom in a more prosperous and powerful condition than any king had dobe before him.”

The ancient dynasty of the Sassinadae sets up an almost mythical setting of the story and gives us a feeling of exoticism. It also gives us a general idea of when this king ruled which was back when Persia still existed as one giant country. The set up is already one of a fairytale. We are introduced to this king who led a very powerful country, and he, has died recently but his dynasty is continued on by his two sons who succeed him.

“The two sons who survived him loved each other tenderly, and it was a real grief to the elder, Chahriar, that the laws of the empire forbade him to share his dominions with his brother Schahzeman. Indeed, after ten years, during which thist state of things had not ceased to trouble him, Schahriar cut off the country of Great Tartary from the Persian Empire and made his brother king.”

The names of these brothers, Schariar and Schahzeman, gives us a feeling of exoticism. It is something that has happned such a long time ago that people nowadays might view as myth or legend. However, we will never know if this story was in fact actually true or fabled.

“Now the Sultan Schahriar had a wife whom he loved more than all the world, and his greatest happiness was to surround her with splendour, and to give her the finest dresses and the most beautiful jewels. It was therefore with deepest shame and sorrow that he accidentally discovered, after several years, that she had deceived him completely, and her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad, that he felt himself obliged to carry out the law of the land, and order the grand-vizir to put her to death. The blow was so heavy that his mind almost gave way, and he declared that he was quite sure that at bottom all women were as wicked as the sultana, if you could only find them out,and that the fewer the world contained the better. So every evening he married a fresh wife and had her strangled the following morning before the grand-vizir, whose duty it was to provide these unhappy brides for the Sultan. The poor man fulfilled his task with reluctance, but there was no escape, and everyday saw a girl married and a wife dead.”

Now we find that the Sultan’s wife was decietful and unfaithful to him. We are not given her name because the storyteller does not want her to be, to the readers, more personable. Again, the way that this telling is, is that it creates a lot of imagery and very much a verbose way of telling the story because we can assume that the story, before it was written down, was passed on verbally. The extremeness of the Sultan’s point of view suggests of the feeling of the story being legendary. The decription of “the blow was so heavy,,,way” suggest that he was very much in love with his wife and did not at all suspect his wife of misconduct. Thus, the extremeity of his point of view suggest that he was very much affected by her actions because he has held her to very high esteem. It should also be noted here that the simplicity of the language used suggests again the idea of a fairy tale rather than historical factual account and also evoke the feeling of exoticism.

“This behaviour caused the greatest horror in the town, where nothing was heard but cries and lamentations. In one house was a father weeping for the loss of his daughter, in another perhaps a mother

This paragraph serves no other purpose than to highlight the brutality of the Sultan’s actions. The description caused the “greatest horror” lets us readers picture what it meant for the Sultan to pass such a

trembling for the fate of her child; and instead of blessings that had formerly been heaped on the Sultan’s head, the air was now full of curses.”

decree. Now we are also introduced to the shift in the story. Previously, we are introduced to how well-ruled the people of the Persian empire were and how much they loved his king for his wisdom. However, now that King Schariar has passed his decree, there is a change in event and now people were more focused on the fact that he was basically killing young women instead of how prospersous the land was. Again, we must now that the two-dimensionality of the chracters and the storyline. Followin in the same format of that of a fairy tale, we see that in the introduction that the sudden event that befalls one of the characters and we suddenly see the change in their personality.

“The grand-vizir himself was the father of two daughters, of whom the elder was called Scheherazade, and the younger Dinarzade. Dinarzade had not particular gifts to distinguish her from other girls, but her sister was clever and courageous in the highest degree. Her father had given her the best masters in philosophy, medicine, history and the fine arts, and besides all this, her beauty excelled that of any girl in the kingdom of Persia.”

Now we are introduced to the grand-vizir who, as we know, was tasked to finding brides for the king. We understand that because he has two daughters, he is not as cruel and heartless a King Schariar seems to be. Again, the emphasis on sibling love is very important as we have previously seen of Schariar who loved his brother tenderly but like, Scheherazade, he was the one who inherited the throne of the Persian Empire and therefore, was seen as more important and talented than his younger brother. Scheherazade, too, has a younger sister, although not as bright as her elder sister, had a very important role in Scheherazade’s survival which again, is contingent of the 2D of the characters. Because the sibling love each other, they are willing to do a lot of things for each other and never engage in behaviour of jealousy.

“One day, when the grand-vizir was talking to his eldest daughter, who was his delight and pride, Scheherazade said to him, ‘Father, I have a favour to ask of you. Will you grant it to me?’

‘I can refuse you nothing,’ replied he, ‘that is just and reasonable.’

‘Then listen,’ said Scheherazade, ‘I am determined to stop this barbarous practice of the Sultan’s, and to deliver the girls and mothers from the awful fate that hanges over them,’

What she is going to ask later on is just and extremely reasonable. The dialogue between Scheherazade and her father is designed firstly to suggest a sense of intelligence in Scheherazade and that her father held her so dearly that he did not treat her like many of the women of the time were treated. Thus, this dialogue serves to suggest that Scheherazade is indeed very special and although we don’t know her plan, by making her sound so reasonable and calm in the face of her father’s horror, we are more likely to believe in the success of the heroine. Also, to further emphasize the amount of respect her father gave her as a person, we see that he could not refuse her, again,

‘It would be an excellent thing to do,’ returned the grand-vizir, ‘but how do you propse to accomplish it?’

‘My father,’ answered Scheherazade, ‘it is you who have to provide the Sultan daily with a fresh wife, and I implore you, by all the affection you bear me, to allow the honour to fall upon me.’

‘Have you lost your senses?’ cried the grand-vizir, starting back in horror. ‘What has put such a thing into your head? You ought to know by this time what it means to be the sultan’s bride!’

‘Yes my father, I know it well,’ replied she, ‘and I am not afraid to think of it. If I fail, my death will be a glorious one, and if I succeed I shall have done a great service to my country.’

‘It is of no use,’ said the grand-vizir, ‘I shall never consent. If the Sultan was to order me to plunge a dagger in your heart, I should have to obey. What a task for a father! Ah, if you do not fear death, fear at any rate the anguish you would cause me.’

‘Once again, my father,’ said Scheherazade, will you grant me what I ask?’

‘What, are you still so obstinate?’ exclaimed the grand-vizir. ‘Why are you so resolved upon your own ruin?’

But the maiden absolutely refused to attend to her father’s words, and at length, in despair, the grand-vizir was obliged to give way, and went sadly to the palace to tell the Sultan that the following evening he would bring him Scheherazade.”

emphasizing that fact the Scheherazade was indeed very special.

“’Sire,’ returned the vizir. ‘Whatever the cost, I will obey you. Though a father, I am also your subject’ So the Sultan told the grand-vizir he might bring his daughter as soon as he liked.”

Here what is emphasized is that the characters in the story are not complicated so we get the general structure of good vs evil. The father is seen as a “good” subject and a “good” father, he will not beg the Sultan spare his own life or his daughter’s and obeys the Sultan’s

commands regardless of how horrible he himself might think himself to be.

“The vizir took back this news to Scheherazade, who received it as if it had been the most pleasant thing in the world. She thanked her father warmly for yielding to her wishes, and, seeing him still bowed down with grief, told him that she hoped he would never repent having allowed her to marry the Sultan. Then she went to prepare herself for the marriage, and begged that her sister Dinarzade should be sent for to speak to her.”

This is the second appearance of Scheherazade’s sister, Dinarzade and in this instance, she does not play much of a role but she is still very muach important in allowing Scheherazade’s plan to work out.

“When they were alone, Scheherazade addressed her thus:

‘My dear sister; I want youre help in a very important affair. My father is going to take me to the palace to celebrate my marriage with the Sultan. When his Highness receives me, I shall beg him, as a last favour, to let you sleep in our chamber, so that I may have your company during the last night I am alive. If, as I hope, he grants me my wish, be sure that you wake me an hour before the dawn, and speak to me in these words: ‘My sister, if you are not asleep, I beg you, before the sun rises, to tell me one of your charming stories.’ Then I shall begin, and I hop by this means to deliver the people from the terror that reigns over them.’ Dinarzade replied that she would do with pleasure what her sister wished.”

We are introduced her plan to preventing the Sultan from killing her and young women. Although she does not tell Dinarzade her whole plan for why and how she plans to use this to prevent the Sultan from using her, we see that Dinarzade, out of love for her sister, agrees to do as she asks and thus we see why Dinarzade is important. She provides the necessary tool for Scheherazade to continue to live by entertaining the Sultan. Thus, if she did not agree, we would not have this story and we see how that this fable tells us that Dinarzade is not as brave and courageous as her sister, she is just as courageous and just as brave because if the Sultan finds out that both of them were deceiving him in such a way, they would both be put to death and the grand-vizir would lose both daughters.

“When the usual hour arrived the grand-vizir conducted Scheherazade to the palace, and left her alone with the Sultan, who bade her raise her veil and was amazed at her beauty. But seeing her eyes full of tears,he asked what was the matter. ‘Sire’ replied Scheherazade, ‘I have a sister who loves me as tenderly as I love her. Grant me the favour of allowing her to sleep this night in the same room, as it is the last we shall be together.’ Schahriar consened to Scheherazade’s petition and Dinarzade was sent for.

Basicaly, ths Sultan is willign to grant Scheherazade’s wish because he understands the love that siblings have for each other, he does not wish to deny Scheherazade of her request for her sister because it is her last request.

“An hour before daybreak Dinarzade awoke and exclaimed, as she had promised, ‘My dear sister, if you are not asleep, tell me I pray you, before the sun rises, one of your charming stories. It is the last time that I shall have the pleasure of hearing you.’

This basically is a story within a story within a story and so on and so forth. We see that the way this is structured is such that the stories that Scheherazade is as colorful as her own stories in order to peak the interest of the Sultan. Clearly, the Sultan also would like to be

Scheherazade did not answer her sister, but turned to the Sultan. ‘Will your highness permit me to do as my sister asks?’ said she.

‘Willingly.’ He answered. So Scheherazade began.

entertained and so she agrees to her telling the story. At the same time, it could also be that he grants her last request because he understands Dinarzade and Scheherazade love each other and he could not bear of the last moments of companionship.

[Whole extract] Overall, the structure of this story is suggestive of a fairy tale. However, we do not know whether or not this is a true story as previously mentioned, many of these ancient stories were passed on verbally and embellishments would have been made as the stories were passed around. Also note that there was an element of irony as the Sultan was angry at the sultana for decieving him but Scheherazade is also decieving him by telling him stories that never finish before the dawn breaks and her subsequent death. Also note the 2 dimensionality of the characters and plot leads us to believe in the story. If it was written in any other way, it was difficult to see how Scheherazade’s plan could not have failed. Thus,, the simplicity of the people and characters of the story suggest a time very far in the past were things seemed to be much simpler than now.

A heroQuote Explanation[Title] Because the title of this is “A hero”, this story could be about something

marvellous and courageous. But as we will see later on that this story is full of irony and it is a response to what it means to be a hero.

“For Swami events took an unexpected turn. Fater looked over the newspaper he was reading under the hall lamp and said, ‘Swami, listen to this: ‘News is to hand of the bravery of a village lad who, while returning from a jungle path, came face to face with a tiger…’’ The paragraph described the fight the boy had with the tiger and his flight up a tree, where he stayed for half a day till some people came that way and killed the tiger.”

The first sentence starts off with a sentence that tells us that it is not a story we expect it to be. Furthermore, the story, as we will see later on, serves to question what it means to be a hero. Clearly, from the first paragraph, the father sees heroism as doing something that is coragious and brave and not backing down from the teeth of danger. Swami, as we will see later on, has no courage and is a coward.

“Swami said, ‘I think he must have been very strong and grown-up person, not at all a boy fight a tiger?’”

We are introduced to Swami’s character in this line, in that he is very much a cowardly boy and see reading about other boy’s exploits with danger and automatically assume that they are not boys but are men who, in his mind, are supposed to be brave.

“’You think you are wiser than the newspaper?’ Father sneered. ‘A man may have the strength of an elephant and yet be a coward: whereas another may have the strength of a straw, but if he has courage, he can do anything. Courage is everything, strength and age are not important.’”

Now we are introduced to the character of the father. He belittles Swami’s practicality of assuming it is diffcult for a boy to fight a tiger and believes instead, courage, whatever his concept of courage is, is far more important than having brute strenght. Furthermore, we see that coourage for them is related to strength and not at all like the courage we see that we see in Scheherazade.

“’We’ll see about it later,’ Father cut in, ‘You must sleep alone hereafter.’ Swami realized the matter had gone beyond his control; he knew his father’s tenacity at such moments.

We know that the father is smart in that he is trying to change subjects. Swami tries to change the subject because he is scared and his father sees that and changes the subject back by telling him that he has to sleep in the office alone.

“‘From the first time of next month I’ll sleep alone, Father.’‘No you must do it now. It is disgraceful sleeping beside granny or mother like a baby. You are in the second form and I don’t at all like the way you are brought up,’ he said…”

That is the unexpected turn of events that happens to Swami. Clearly, we see that his father is desperate to have Swami to be as courageous as the other boys he reads about in the paper and is disappointed that he cannot even sleep by himself. So Swami, not having any other choice decides to prolong as long as possible and says that he will sleep alone from next month onwards.

“Swami’s father sat gloomily gazing at the newspaper on his lap. Swami rose silently and tiptoed away to his bed in the passage. Granny was sitting up in her bed, and remarked, ‘Boy, are you already feeling sleep? Don’t you want a story?’ Swami made wild gesticulations to silence his granny, but that good lady saw nothing. So Swami threw himself on his bed an pulled the blanket over his face.”

So swami feels very much alone in this situation because his mother doesn’t seem to defend him and his grandmother does not seem to understand the weight of this situation. IN these two paragraphs, the dialogue and esecially the way that Swami talks to his grandmother shows how Swami is afraid of having to sleep alone. In contrast, Swami’s fear is offset by his father’s “gloomy gaze” at the newspaper. Here, “gloomy” does not refer to sad but rather quiet and imposing.

“Presently Father came and stood over him. ‘Swami get up,’ he said. He looked like an apparition in the semi-darkness of the passage, which was lit by a cone of light from the hall.”

His father appearing like a ghost is supposed to evoke a feeling that is supposed to represent’s Swami’s worst fears.

“’Let me sleep in the hall, Father,’ Swami pleaded. ‘Your office room is very dusty and there may be scorpions behind your law books.’

‘There are no scorpions, little fellow,’

Swami is using this as an excuse to get out of sleeping in his father’s office room.

Swami father’s thinks that by making Swami face his worst fear of being alone

and in the dark, Swami will become as courageous as the boy in the newspaper.The use of irony here highlights the fact that Swami is blaming his father for his own cowardice.The personification of “the night advanced” gives a sense of foreboding and emphasizes the fact that Swami’s heart was beating fast and he is very scared. He is imagining all those scenarios so he can be prepared for it when it happens.Swami goes under the bench to hide because he thinks that whatever is out to get him cannot see him.Swami’s dream is described so vividly because he thinks that it is happening to him in real life so he is scared.From this paragraph, we can see that Swami’s courage is stemmed from his cowardice. His courage is courage that happens accidentally. So, Swami is not courageous because he is still cowardly at the end of the short story. Swami wants to prevent the devil from catching him so by biting it, he can survive. He is acting out of instinct. The author is trying to say that courage is a choice and not out of survival instinct.

VeronicaQuote Explanation[Title] Veronica is set in Nigeria, acountry with a troubled political history. The

country has been torn apart from tribal and political groups, suffering massacres. As a result, financial development of the country is limited and rural areas have been badly affected by poverty.

We had grown up together in my native village. Her family had been even poorer than mine, which was saying something in those days. Her father was a brute and her mother was weak, and since she was the eldest child a lot of the responsibility for bringing up the other children had fallen on her. From time to time I helped her out, but there was little I could do. Her father was a morbidly suspicious man. Visitors, apart from his drinking companions, were

The first paragraph introduces us to the speaker, whose name we find out later is Okeke. Despite Veronica being poor and having bringing up her brothers and sister due to having a brute father and a weak mother, Okeke and Veronica remain close friends. In the first paragraph, we also learn that Veronica’s father is abusive as the speaker can hear her screams at night and her father is morbidly suspicious of other people finding out At the same time, they are living in a traditional village so his father is

not encouraged, and I had no desire to be the cause of even more misery. I helped her fetch water from the stream and occasionally chopped firewood, but that was all. Night after night I would lie awake listening to her screams, cursing myself for my own physical inadequacy and my father for his unwillingness to become involved.

unwilling to sell out a friend to help someone who is seen as worthless and valueless. The speaker curses his own physical inadequacies because he feels that he is unable to stand up to Veronica’s father

When I was twelve I started at the secondary school in the town a few miles away. During term-time I stayed with my uncle, returning to the village only during the vacations. Veronica and I remained friendly, and she was always pleased to see me, and when we could we snatched time together by the stream and she asked me endless questions about my school and the town and what I was going to be when I grew up. But for all the misery of her own life she never seemed to envy me mine

The second paragraph tells us that Veronica herself is hopeless about her own future so she doesn’t envy Okeke of going to school. In this paragraph, school represents hope.

And then came the day when I was to leave for good. I had won a scholarship to the University and I knew in my heart I would be away a long time. I was eighteen then and I thought I knew my own worth. The day before I left we met by the stream.

Okeke thinks he ‘knew his own worth” because he won a scholarship to the University and thinks he is too good for the village so he is going to leave the village and move into the city. This is demonstrated in the line “I was to leave for good”.

As she walked towards me I realized for the first time that she was no longer a girl anymore but a young woman. Her clothes were still shabby and if she was no great beauty she still had a certain attractiveness that I knew would appeal to some men.

The speaker is attracted to Veronica because she is this one person he will always remember. He has been childhood friends with her for so long.

‘You must be happy to be going,’ she said. I shrugged and pretended to beunconcerned, but of course it was the break I had hardly dared hope for. ‘What about you?’ I asked.‘Me!’ ‘Yes, why don’t you get out of this place? It has nothing to offer you.’ ‘I can’t just leave my family.’ ‘Why not? What have they ever done for you?’ ‘Don’t talk like that. They are my family, that is enough.’ ‘But think of all the things you can do in the city,’ I said.

She already sees worthless and valueless so she doesn’t even try to leave the village. This is because she doesn’t see herself as important enough to leave the village and move to the city. Veronica is glad that the speaker is leaving but she feels that she is left behind and she has no hope to catch up with the speaker.

‘No, the city is for you, not me. What will I do once I get there? I have no qualifications, not even Standard Six.’ Although I knew there was a lot of truth in what she said I resisted her arguments: I suppose I was both appalled and frightened by her fatalism. ‘You can go to night school and become a secretary,’ I said. She shook her head. ‘I leave that to others, my own place is here.’I snapped a twig and threw it into the water. It bobbed on the current and then vanished from sight.

The trouble of village life is that everything is stagnant because they are so isolated. Thus, it is very hard for them to jump out of their cycle of poverty.

I was shocked by what I found. Either I had forgotten about the squalor of village life, or it had worsened during my absence. The place was crawling with disease and everybody was living — surviving, rather — in acute poverty.

This paragraph shows that the place is so poor that the people there are barely living, hence, “surviving, rather”.

I was in the village a month. I saw Veronica every day, and sometimes her husband. He was a good man, as she had said, if a bit simple. On the day I left I had to force her to accept a present of some money. It was as much as I could afford, but not as much as I would have liked to have been able to give her.

She is used to the village life because she grows up in the village life so she had nothing and hoped for nothing. So when she has more than nothing, she feels grateful for what she has. She wants to stay in the village life because she feels unfamiliar with city life. She doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her so she doesn’t want ot leave the village because this is somewhere she has grown up in so it is something familiar to her. She is complacent in staying here because she has no skills or education so she wants to stay in someplace familiar to her.

‘Okeke, I won’t live to see tomorrow. Nor do I want to. My husband is dead, and my child also. There is nothing left for me in this world.’ ‘You’re still a young woman, in time you will forget this.’ ‘No, Okeke, listen to me. I don’t want to live, you hear? Now that I have seen you I am happy. Go, and leave me in peace.’She closed her eyes and turned her face to the wall. I gathered her up in my arms. She weighed no more than a ten-year-old child. She was dead before I reached my car.

I cried that night for the terrible waste. In the morning, just as the sun was rising, I carried her body down to the stream. And then I dug her a grave and buried her and afterwards I watched the flow

Everything is taken away from her so what you see in this piece is a progression of someone’s life in this kind of place. You have them as children when they are young and innocent , you see them as a little older when they begin to realize, a little bit older when they have their own life and grow into themselves, and finally, when they are old and the hopeless destitution in these kinds of poverty where when they die, no one will ever know their name because they are nobody. Veronica’s life is described as a

“terrible waste” because nothing significant happened in her life and she died as a nobody in a nameless village. He says that he is going “away for the last time” because now that Veronica has died, he doesn’t see any reason to return to the village.

of the stream until it was time for me to go away for the last time.

Telephone ConversationLine Quote Explanation1-2 The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent.The first line suggests the same simplicity that we see in the title. However, our first question is what the narrator is buying, what kind of a price is considered reasonable, and what does he mean by the personification of the place as indifferent.

2-3 The landlady swore she livedOff premises

Her we see what the narrator is paying for. He seems to be buying or renting an apartment. However, given that it seems to be important that the landlady “lived off premises” perhaps he is merely renting a room in a house.

4 self-confession. They way that the narrator seems to be hestiant about confessing something about himself suggests that whatever he is confessing could be the difference between getting the room or not. Without any background, we seem to think that narrator must be a criminal in order for his self-confession to make so much a difference.

4-5 ‘Madam’ I warned,’I am African’

Why is being African considered to be a warning? This line also gives us an idea of the time period which this African is looking to rent an apartment in

5 “’I hate a wasted journey’” The idea of a ‘wasted journey’ suggests that the narrator has already made several such journeys looking to rent apartments. However, seeing as he is having this phone conversation, his searches have been in vain. Because he is African, he is thus unable to secure a place to live.

6-7 Silence. Silenced transmission ofPressurized good-breeding.

The repitition of silence emphasizes the length and heaviness that falls upon the disapproval and surprise of his confession. The phrase “pressurized good-breeding” emphasizes the haughtiness of the person at the other end. The irony is that for someone who is just a landlady, she can also be considered to be someon of good breeding. This idea of “pressurized good-breeding” can also suggest the illusion of an uptight upper-class woman. The fact that such a feeling can be transmitted through the silence over the phone, c”learly means that racism is very much a part of the narrator’s daily life and is a struggle he must deal with every single day.

7-9 Voice.. The personification of the woman’s voice emphasizes the overbearing white

Lipstick-coated, long gold-rolledCigarette-holder pipped.

superiority that pervade that time period. The African narrator is clearly inferior to this white woman, who even through the phone, holds more power than her title of landlady suggests. There is also irony presented in these lines is demonstrated through the personification of the woman’s voice. “Lipstick-coated” and “long gold cigarette” suggest more of a middle-class level rather than the upper-class snob that her silence suggested.

9 Caught I was, foully The way the narrator phrases this line seems to suggest a child who was caught with some misdemeanor. Seeing that he is renting an apartment, he is not a child. However, because he is African, he seems to see himself as inferior. The description “foully” emphsizes the feeling that being African is disgusting.

10-11 ’HOW DARK?’… I had not misheard…’ARE YOU LIGHTOR VERY DARK’

Apparently for the woman, there are different types of African that the women can consider to exist; the very light or the very dark. This is the first direct suggestion of racism from the woman on the other end and demonstrates that the narrator was not wrong before to feel inferior to this perceived superiority

11 Button B. Button A. The idea that one can categorize Africans as either or is represented by the description of the buttons on old public telephones. There are only two choices and the woman seems to think that all Africans can be divided into such categories.

12-13 Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered.

The repitition of the idea of the foulness in the phone booth seems to mean that it is because the narrator occupies the space that makes the phone booth “rancid”. The repition of red suggests how brightly the narrator stands out. Again, this repeats the idea of being caught, ie. red-handed.

14 Omnibus squelching tar This idea of squelching as a foul word emphsizing the easiness of squishing bugs. This, as we can see is a companion between the African and bug.

14-16 It was real! Shamed By ill-mannered silence, surrenderPushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.

The surprise as evident by the sudden exclamation in the middle of of the poem emphsizes the shame and surprise of the narrator out being caught being African. He seems to think that had she hot express surprise at his being African, he may have gotten away with it. The next suggests that the narrator is also ashamed of himself. His “ill-mannered silence” was because of his surprise at being asked such a direct question. The use of “surrender” in these lines suggests that the narrator has already given up on even trying to feel somesort of respect for himself. He has surrendered to the woman’s racism

and superiority. Thus, instead of asking for simplification, the narratory must beg. The use of the word “beg” suggests and inferiority complex, again emphasizes the shame that the narrator feels that being African brings.

17 Considerate she was The irony of her being considerate again highlights the racial superiority that being a non-African has already established. Thus, this woman is considerate because she is not just categorizing all Africans as the same but she is also able to differentiate between the light and the dark.

20-21 Her accent was clinical, curshing in its lightImpersonality.

The indifference and coldness of the woman’s voice upon learning that the narrator is African suddenly becomes more of an order than a request. The phrase “light impersonality” suggests a distance the narrator feels between himslef and this woman and it is this distance that the narrator feels crushes him.

21 Rapidly, wave-length adjusted, “Wavelength” suggests the sudden click in his brain but by making it sound scientific, the narrator is following the way that he sees the woman to sound.

23=24 I chose. ‘West African sepia’ – and as afterthought,’Down in my passport.’

The afterthought of adding in that the color his color of his skin down on his passport suggest a last-minute desperate attempt at providing her with an official document of the color of his skin.

24-25 Flight of fancy, till truthfulness changed her accentHard on the mouthpiece. ‘WHAT’S THAT?’

What used to be a different accent upon learning that he is African, she has cecome suddenly icy cold and hard. Becasuse she does not know the meaning of ‘West African Sepia’, it therefore holds no importance to her. For her, she only recognizes the light or the dark, the answer does not give her either or she believes him to be deliberately confusing her.

26-27 DON’T KNOW WHT THAT IS.’ ‘Like brunette.’’THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?’ ‘Not altogether.’

The difference between the way that the narrator writes her dialogue, in this case, in capitals and in short phrases suggests an alsmost authoritative tone to her voice.

26-32 Facially I am brunette, but madam, you should seeThe rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feetAre a peroxide blond. Friction caused – Foolishly madam – by sitting down, has turnedMy bottom raven black –

This last lengthy monolgue by the narrator demonstrates the follishness seeing people by two colors. The narrator himself is brunette, blond and b;ack. The emphasis he puts upon being different colors clearly provides a contrast to the racism that is clearly evident. The narrator cleverly uses different in his poem to emphasize that the world is not only in dark or in light. By representing different parts of him in different colors he is suggesting that people are not merely two dimensional.

33-34 Her reciever rearing on the thunderclapAbout my ears

This metaphor given that the narrator seems to provide too many opinions about himself represents the woman’s impatience at having to listen to an

African give too many opinions on himself.34-35 ’Madam,’ I pleaded, ‘wouldn’t you rather

See for yourself?’The last two lines of this poem represents the narrator begging the woman to give him a chance. Although, on the surface he is merely asking her “to see for” herself, he is also asking her to see him as he truly is. This duality of meaning is important because it acts as an emphasis on the woman’s “consideration” at seeing the Africans as light and dark. At the same time, it also highlights the contradiction that is presented. Previously the narrator says that he does not want to make a wasted journey but now that he senses that she might be more open to him, he begs her to give him another chance.

RememberLine Quote Explanation

1 Remember me when I am gone away, The question is where did she go? Why did she go away? Why isn’t the person she is talking to go with her after she goes? This is a first example of who she is talking to clearly, this person is very important to her because she wants them to remember her. The very act of asking them to remember her after she leaves suggests that this person clearly has had a lengthy relationship of some sort with her.

2 Gone far away into the silent land; The second line answers the question of where she has gone. However, readers are still left wondering what she means by “silent land”. First we see that this suggests an idea of death; “silent land” seems to mean that she is no longer part of the world of the living. Death brings about a quietness in both the one’s left behind and the ones who go away, liked the writer. However, the idea of “silent land” could also suggest the deep recesses of memory. She has faded into the memory of the person she is talking to. Again the relationship between the narrator and the audience is shown and it seems that they’ve clearly had a close and personal relationship but now that they have parted ways, she becomes no more than a ghost to him.

3 When you can no more hold me by the hand, Here, this is open to intepretation. Again, we see an element of Death; the narrator seems to be no longer part of the world the audience inhabits. In other wordes, the narrator and heraudience no longer inahbits the same physical space; “no more hold me by the hand.”

4 Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. In this line we se that the narrator is unable to leave; perhaps she still has

some feelings for her audience. It shows some conflict in her mind as she leaves’ even though she has to go away she would much rather things remain as they are. The structure of this line demonstrates how she tries to stay with her audience. First she thinks she is leaving. Instead, her act at leaving turns into her returning. This line seems to suggest that she is a ghost of a memory. The person that she is talking to has already almost forgotten her. But in their memory, she tries in vain to make them remember her again. Perhaps the place she has gone is actually Death but she speaks from the point of view of a memory rather than a ghost.

6 You tell me of our future that you planned: This is further evidence of the relationship between her and her audience. Not only had they had a past, but they were also planning a future together. What does this person need to understand? Here we see that the most important thing to the narrator is not the memories they created nor the memories they might’ve had in the future but rather, that they remember her.

8 It will be late to counsel then or pray. There are dual elements in this line; either the relationship with the narrator and the audience has broken apart or that she has actually passed away. It seems that she believes that the person she is talking to will be upset about her leaving them that they will need to find comfort from elsewhere. However, there is also a personal element to this line; it seems that she is saying that it will be too late for whomever she is speaking to have a conversation with. She has left permanently and the only thing they could do is to remember her.

9-10 Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieve:

The structure of these two lines emphasizes the lapse in memory. The pause between “afterwards remember” and “do not grieve” emphasizes the need for the narrator to be remember and the acceptance that she will be forgotten. The narrator speaks as though she left a dearly loved one whom she assumes would miss her. These two lines highlightst the purpose of this poem, which is what her advice and what she would like this person to do after she is gone.

11 For if the darkness and corruption leave Again we hace suggestion of dual elements in death, “darkness” is represented by a burial and “corruption” is represented by the slow decay of the body. In memory, “darkness” suggests forgetting; ie. the gradual fading of the memory into the dark recesses of the mind. “Corruption”

suggests a memory that has been remembered wrongly because of the length of time that has passed.

13-14 Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.

The last two lines of this poem is in direct conflict with both the title and the rest of the poem. Although she asks that the audience remember her after she is gone away, she seems to introspect and changes her mind about the audience remembering her. Instead of wanting them to be sad, she prefers to want to fade away forever.

[Whole poem] There is an element of conflict from the beginning of the poem to the end. In the beginning, she wants the audience to remember her but in the end, she suddenly changes her mind. However, this could also suggest that she is actually fearful of being forgotten; she is desperate for someone , in this case, the person she feels is most important to her, to remember her as she once was. Perhaps this also suggests that she is actually scared of the darkness and emptiness that Death brings. One of the key themes of this poem is inner conflict. She both wants to be remembered and does not want to be remembeered partially. At the end of this poem, it is still ascertain just who it is she is talking to. However, we are able to see that she and this person have clearly had a close relationship. The tone of this poem is candid; she is able to speak freely and frankly to them. There is no element of sadness in this poem; instead, it reads as a haunted memory. It is quiet, and unaggressive; the narrator tries to appear as unobtrusive as possible.

PianoLine Quote Explanation

1 Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; “Softly” and “dusk” suggest a feeling of nostalgia. We don’t know this woman but she is clearly not important because she is just a woman.

2-3 Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano

Again we see the evocation of nostalgia. Clearly there is something in the music that reminds the narrator of his childhood. The use of the world “vista” suggest the lengthy amount of time has passed and the narrator has aged but with this one song, he has remembered his childhood.

4-5 …in the boom of the tinglingStrings

The descriptiveness the “boom of the tingling strings” gives us a contrast suggest the loudness of the piano and yet the strings themselves don’t boom,

they tingle. This gives us a contrast to how the narrator remembers it; both qualities of the same piano. Now we see what he remembers and why this woman singing brings back memories of his mother as she smiles as she sings. Maybe she is happy and maybe his childhood environment is one of happiness.

7-8 In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of songBetrays me back…

The phrase “in spite of” makes it seem that he doesn’t want to remember his past. The woman singing evokes such strong emotions that “in spite of himself” brings back memories that he does not want to remember, so he “betrays himself” to memory. It is against his will; he does not want to remember yet he continues to listen and it is forcing him to remember.

8-10 …till the heart of me weeps to belongTo the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outsideAnd hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.

This paints the picture of his childhood, his Sunday evenings with his mother with a “cozy parlour” and “tinkling piano” His childhood seems to be one of happiness and his family are really close. He clearly was very well taken care of. Perhaps this is a contrast to his current life. This is possibly why his heart “Weeps to belong” and aches to go back to being a happy child. The word “hymns” suggest that he may have been part of a religious family. Traditionally, hymns are sung with references to Chirstianity and Catholicism and so his family must’ve been religious because of the importance of Sunday which is the Lord’s day. He likens the piano to some sort of a religious guide. The “tinkling piano” leading them on the hymns of the Lord.

11 So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor “Clamor” and “tinkiling” are a contrast. In his current state and environment, the piano is something that represent passion and loudness hence, “burst” and “clamor” the piano of his childhood tinkled and in spite of the loudness of the present, it is the quiet tinkle of the piano of his past that most attracts him.

12 With the great black piano appassionato. Here we see the emphasis on how loud the present is. The “great black piano appassionato”. The piano in the present does not reflect the piano of his childhood. The singer now sings with so much passion and emotion that in spite of all of it, cannot compare to the quiet piano of his past and of his mother singing to him. The contrast between the two is used to highlight the irony of the situation. In spite of the loudness, the narrator cannot focus on the singer and instead remembers his childhood.

12-13 The glamourOf childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

The “glamour of childish days is upon me” The glamour emphasizes that his childhood times were one of more happiness or more goodness than what he

has now. His “childish days” it doesn’t mean he is immature but means that his days spent being a child is much more attractive than his manhood. The contrast between the words “childish” and “manhood”. Instead of being proud that he is a man, he is ready to cast aside his days of being a man to be a child. Again we see here this stanza and the previous one. In the previous stanza, he desnt not want to remember . But as the woman sings to him, he is brought back to the memories of his childhood until he cannot help but remember.

14-15 Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for thePast.

We see the image of being washed away. The narrator deliberately does this because he chooses to use the image of water to represent the progression of the narrator’s memory. First, it starts off as a trickle of water as he first begins to remember and in acoording to the gradual loudness of the paino which is appasionato, the water of his memory has now burst through and has flooded his mind. This has therefore been expressed by his “weeping like a child”. He remembers his days as a child and now he weeps like one for the past.

[Whole poem] The rhyme scheme is AABB. This is used to serve to tie the whole poem togehther by emphasizeing the melody of the narrator’s liens. By giving this a rhyme scheme, the narrator is making the poem sing like the piano he remembers.

A mother in a refugee campLine Quote Explanation

1-2 No Madonna and Child could touchHer tenderness for a son.

A reference to a famous painting or even a religious symbol. The Madonna does not necessarily refer to religious meaning but a Madonna pias and a very beautiful woman; unearthly quality that makes her beautiful. However, in the first two lines that this mother is more loving and more beautiful than something that is already unearthly. Her tenderness for her son is something that not even unearthly than the painting or the beauty because she is more than a Madonna and Child.

3 She soon would have to forget… The ellipsis serve to emphasize the fact that she has to forget as time passes. It seems that it would be important to her because remembering it would be too much of a burden to bear.

4 The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea, The contrast that we see suddenly between the beautiful picture of Madonna

and Child suggests that they are actually in a refugee camp. The refugee camp clearly seems to be overcrowded because the air was “heavy” because diarrhea comes with disease and sickness. The contrast is that everywhere you went that you would smell that odor which meant that everywhere you went there was disease and sickness. The language that they use here the aire was “heavy”. The tone of that word already brings down the first two lines. “odor” emphasizes the fact that the smell permeated the air.

5 Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs The contrast between “unwashed” and “washed-out”. The kids are in a refugee camp and do not have the luxury of washing. This again suggests the idea of disease and sickness. “Washed-out” suggests that they are so thin that their ribs are sticking out. They are so pale that they blend into the background.

6 And dried-up bottoms waddling in laboured steps This is a description of the kids in contrast to the Madonna and her kid. It emphasizes the starvation and sickness of these children. They are so diseased that it is hard to walk around. It sounds difficult to read and it reflects how difficult it is to walk. It provides a contrast to what we expect kids to do; r unning around, but they can’t.

7 Behind blown-empty bellies. Alliteration. This serves to highlight what they are running from. The repitition of “B” remind us of bombs and perhaps they were running from war. And even though they are in a refugee camp, they don’t feel safe from the disease and sickness and they have a fear of the bombs that are being dropped on them.

7-8 Other mothers thereHad long ceased to care, but not this one;

This mother is different from other mothers in the sense that others has long ceased to care of something . This also emphasizes the futility of the mother because the other mothers have long ceased to care and that the mother is the only one left. As we saw before, she was soon have to forget something. Even though she has to forget soon, it serves to emphasizes her desperation and her futility. Even though we have singled her out as something more than a Madonna, in fact, she is more than a Madonna because she is a refugee because there is no hope for her situation.

9-11 She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,And in her eyes the memoryOf a mother’s pride

Now we have a clue as to what she is caring about. Before we saw that her tenderness was for her son, and then we are introduced to the fact that the refugee camp was full of sickness. So, her “ghost smile” suggests and foreshadows the event that her son has died. Even her smile has become a

ghost because now she now has to forget. “Memories of a mothers pride”. She remembers her son clearly. She remembers how proud of her son she is. It is only a memory now because her son is no longer with her. Ther personification of her smile that she could hold between her teeth emphasizes the dryness of the environment. It seems as though she could be holding flowers or something for rememberance. But because there is nothing that is beautiful in the camp, she can only hold the memory of her smile.

11-12 She had bathed himAnd rubbed him down with bare palms.

Here there is a contrast between what we learn before with the unwashed children. Her son she had made sure was bathed, cleaned and dried. Even though the camp had nothing to offer, she offered him her bare hands so that he could be clean.

14-15 A broken comb and combedThe rust-colored hair left on his skull.

The repitition of the K sound in “broken”, “comb”, ”colored” and “skull” emphasizes the brokeness of the mother’s spirit and the physical environment. Even though she is combing his hair, and because they are refugees, everything they own are broken. This foreshadows the woman’s emotions and that it will turn her into a broken woman like all the other mothers. The use of “rust-colored” also foreshadwos death. The idea of “rust” suggests something that is beginning to fade away and breaking apart. And the word “skull” again suggests death.

16 And then–humming in her eyes–begain carefully to part it.

“Humming in her eyes” How can her eyes “hum” ? It is used to emphasize and highlight her tears.

17-20 In their former life this was perhapsA little daily act of no consequenceBefore his breakfast and school; now she did itLike putting flowers on a tiny grave.

Now we see the importance of her washing and combing his hair which is that she is burying him. Although we do not know why he died the disease and sickneess we see in the poem gives us a hint of how he died. There are no flowers to put on his grave there is no where she can erect some kind of a grave for him because they are in a refugee camp and so she is left with the memory of her son who has died. So she performs for him and herself this last act had he still been alive.

Half-past TwoLine Quote Explanation

Half-past Two Half past two is afterschool time in the UK for kindergarten. Half past two is

the time you are supposed to have lieft school to go home. This is important because the poem revolves around the concept of time.

1-3 Once upon a schooltimeHe did Something Very Wrong(I forget what it was).

The way it starts is like a story. The something very wrong is captalized and written in a story form. Written for little kids. The age of the little boy is probably pre-school or kindergarten.

4- And She said he’d doneSomething Very Wrong, and mustStay in the school-room till half-past two.

She is also capitalized. She is the teacher but because it is wrtitten from the perspective of the little boy, so she is an authoritative figure so it is capitalized. The repitition of Some Thing Very Wrong. The bad thing that the boy has done caused the teacher to give him afterschool detention.

7-8 (Being cross, she’d forgotten She hadn’t taught him Time.

This stanza is in brackets. It’s slotted in to tell us the readers why the little boy later on gets confused. The way that this is written is very colloquial, almost like the narrator is telling us a story, as mentioned before. “Time” is captalized so it is important to the little boy; it is foreign to him and a big concept that he doesn’t understand. Already we have established that the little boy is given detention until half past two but because he doesn’t understand time, he does not know what half past two means.

10-15 He knew a lot of time; he knewGettinguptime, timeyouwereoftime,Timetogohomenowtime, TVtime,

Timeformykisstime (that was Grantime)All the important times he knew,But not half-past two.

Now we are introduced to what the little boy think is Time. Time for the little boy is the exactly the way people use the way time for example, “Gettinguptime” is when his parents wake him up: “It’s time to get up” In his mind, his days would revolve around his informal and ambiguos concepts of time where in his mind there is no set numbers that he associates with the the times but rather, all of his times are events. The events of his days, to him, are important so you see how he captalizes every single one of them and they are also names but not numbers. We see why the number “half-past two” is not capitalized because it is a number but not an event.

16-18 He knew the clockface, the little eyesAnd two long legs for walking,But he couldn’t click its language,

The personification of the clock here suggests that he sees as more than just a object; it is a thing or a being that hass its own language, has a face and maybe also, in his mind, a personality. We can see that his description of a clock that it has eyes, and legs for walking. It is possible that this object, for him, exists independent of the people who made it . He seems to think that the clock will also be able to speak to him if the clock spoke to him in his language or he spoke to it in its language.

19-24 So he waited, beyond onceupona,Out of reach of all the timefors,

These two stanzas show what he thinks time is. The concept of time is basically an event. He knows the word “time” and what it means but his

And knew he’d escaped for everInto the smell of old chrysanthemums on Her desk,Into the silent noise his hangnail made,Into the air outside the window, into ever.

concept of time is not our concept of time. He “escped forever/Into the smell of old chrysanthemums on Her desk/Into the silent noise his hangnail made/Into the air outside the window, into ever.” He “escaped” basically into what we call a twilight zone. By not knowing how to read time, giving him a specific number for time, makes no sense to him and because it makes no sense to him essentially he is now in a void. There is no one to tell him it’s time to go and it’s time to pack. The concepts or events he understands as time so the only thing that is happening to him right now is all of his physical senses. So he feels he is in and empty void. He has blended into the smells of his classroom.

25-27 And then, My goodness, she said,Scuttling in, I forgot all about you.Run along or you’ll be late.

The sudden transition here represents that in his void of eternity, in his forgotten existence, just as he has essentialy felt himself to disappear, he is reminded once again he is part of the physical world. His teacher, this authority figure, has broken his non-existence.

28-30 So she slotted him back into schooltimeAnd he got home in time for teatime,Nexttime, notimeforthatnowtime,

She slotted him back into schooltime” He, having been forgotten, thought himself to have been completely out of time. By being reminded by this teacher that he existed and was part of this world, he felt he’d remembered back into his regular dialiy life and time, the time he understands. “Nextime, notforthatnowtime” The wrods are strung together because he thinks that he thinks that is time that happens everyday but the difference here is that he does not capitalize these times. Because he has experienced a timelessness, these times no longer hold so much importance to him. They exist still now that he has time again, but his life no longer revolves around them.

31-33 But he never forgot how once by not knowing time,He escaped into the clockless land for ever,Where time hides tick-less waiting to be born.

Now we assume that he learned what time was. But without having a working concept of time as we understand it, his life was not held by the boundaries of time. The clocks didn’t make sense to him, time didn’t make sense to him. So hearing the tick of the clock was like hearing a foreign language. So time, for him, had not yet been born. By not knowing time, he has been able to escape into timelessness and into just existence without time. Again we see the personification of time “watiing to be born”. After having learned what time was, he now realizes that he must associates wth clocks because clocks tell you what the time is. He knows time exists even though he doesn’t know what the numbers on the clock mean. For him, time stretched out endlessly.

Refugee BluesLine Quote Explanation

Refugee Blues Refugee – a person seeking asylum from persecution or war or threats on one’s lifeBlues – Blues could mean that your sad or ups t about something. This person is upset that he is forced to leave his country. Used to suggest a ballad.

1-3 Say this city has ten million soulsSome are living in mansions, some are living in holes:Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s noplace for us

The first stanza establishes that this peom is indeed written like a song. Note how the narrator says “ten million souls” rather than “ten million people”. By giving this an ethereal feeling, he has essentially detached himself from physical amd the people around him are “souls” so we can assume that his existence to them is basically unnoticed. “Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:/Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us” The narrator talking to someone else, most likely close because he refers to them as “dear”. The tone is not accusatory when he says “there’s no place for us” because he seems to be stating a fact. Even though there are ten million people who are very rich or very poor, they don’t fit in with anybody, so they don’t count.

4-6 Once we had a country and we thought it fair,Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

What does he mean by “Once we had a country”? How can you own a country? What has happened to it so that even though you can see it, they cannot go back to their country? If they own this country, or if they lived in this country, have they been driven out? Also in this stanza, we see a continuation of the ballad-like quality of the poem.

7-9 In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,Every spring it blossoms anew:Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that

In their old village, the narrator remembers a tree that each year would put forth flowers and their existence is apparently dependent of some form of official identity, it holds less meaning than this tree. Again we see this concept of seperation and detachment. Their “old passport” does not provide them with adequate identification so they no longer have a place to go and no one will take them in.

10-12 The consul banged the table and said:‘If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead’:But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive

The consul is an authority figure who issues passports. Theirs is old and expired because they don’t have a country anymore. For the authority figures, without a form of official identification, these people don’t exist for them. Even though as a narrator, they “are still alive” but they are unable to provide official documentation so the consul cannot grant them access to

the country, essentially, their existence have been officially obliterated. They have become shadow people, again emphasizing the theme of detachment and lonliness.

13-15 Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;Asked me politely to return next year:But where shall we go to-day, my dear, where shall we go to-day?

He attempts to seek for help from any person who can represent him officially. While they offered him a chair, meaning that they listened to his story, they had no power to change anything so they asked him to leave again turning him out of a place that could’ve helped him. This is reminescent of the quotation by pastor Martin Niemöller “First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist…”

16-18 Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said: ‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’;He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Not only did the authorites not help them but we see that why they are turned out of the city of “ten million souls”. Public meetings essentially are for citizens to use as a platform ot sound off their own opinions on politicians. Since we are already know that they are refugees now we also see that they identified themselves as refugees, other people identified them as thieves and are fearful that if other people let refugees in, then the refugees wwilll only take from them and not offer anythign in return. They are scared that the refugees would only bring trouble and they themselves will not want to also become refugees.

19-21 Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘They must die’;We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind

Now we know what kind of refugees they are. They are Jews in Hitler’s Germany. The thunder rumbling in the sky is the thunder of the German airplanes that would drop bombs on local Jewish populations to wipe them out.

22-24 Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,Saw a door opened and a cat let in:But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

This person that the narrator is speaking to seems as though they are very young. The narrator is explaining to this person that German Jews were considered lower than animals. Poodles and cats are let into homes but for these people seeking asylum, they are turned away at every corner.

25-27 Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay,Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away

Why did they go down to the quay? Because they had nowhere els to go and were looking for some place to escape. They had no boat and no means of getting acorss the water and these fish, for them, were free to swim around and leave but they are not. They are no idenfication and noone to represent them so they are trapped by their physical identies; that they were German Jews.

28-30 Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

Now we see the narrator places his blame. The human race has politicians and it is these politicians that control and govern the people. And so, they

They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

are to blame for causing them to not have a place to go. Again we see the repitition of animal imagery which serves to emphasize the narrator’s point that they are lower than animals, that German Jews are not even considered to be animals. The other point to this stanza, like the previous one, is that they seem to be trying to escape, hence that they were walking through a wood. The city they were turned out of, they had no one to represent them, no one to help them. So, they must find some means of escaping Hitler’s Europe where they will be killed.

31-33 Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,A thousand windows and a thousand doors;Not one of them was ours,my dear, not one of them was ours.

The idea of homelessness is emphasized. As in the first two stanzas, the narrator sees all of these places aroudn him but not one of them belongs to him because he does not exist, he has no identity, he is persecuted because he is a German Jew. Everywhere he geos, he does not belong. He is shut out of society and is shut out of the human race. There is nowhere and noone to offer refuge.

34-36 Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

The last stanza is very powerful as it evokes a very powerful image. Clearly the narrator and his companion is trying to escape. It is wintertime and they have nowhere to go. Not only are they not part of the city with ten million souls nor the building with a thousand floors in his dreams, there are also ten thousand soldiers searching for their lives. Note that the narrator does not sound fearful, he seems to be only stating a fact. But again, the imagery that this evokes is one of hopelessness. He has no hope to escape and no hope for protection and so, the ten thousand soldiers who are looking to kill them does not inspire a fear in him; it is merely a part of his life. As a German Jew, he has no right to a life.

If– Line Quote Explanation1-2 If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,The title of the poem is “If”. The way that he introduces is a thought experiment. Essentially, Kipling is playing a thought game with us. What he is trying to say is that if you are able to keep the serenity to actually see the crisis and other people are blaming you because they could not place the blame anywhere else. A conditional clause is usually in the following structure: If A, then B. In line 2, we don’t see the second half of this clause.

Instead, Kipling follows this with another conditional clause. This is didatic piece of poetry. Iambic pentameter conversational tone rhythmic fixed pattern. What it meant to be a gentlemen Victorian values and what it meant to be a man Men were willing to fight their own values

3-4 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too,

Here, he is trying to say that if you are able to have faith in yourself regardless of what other people see you but at the same time are able to take in their criticism.

5-8 If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,And yet don’t look to good, nor talk too wise.

The last four lines of this stanza is Kipling discussing what makes a better person that is patience, virtue, and humbleness. By the end of the first stanza, we see that the repetition of “If you can” is used to create tension by stretching out all these “If” conditions; Kipling is building suspense for the final conclusion.

9-10 “If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;”

These two lines is basically Kipling’s call to action: it is important to have goals and dreams to accomplish but he is also says that it is important to not only be a dreamer and not only have goals and not accomplish them.

11-12 “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same;”

The captialization of triumph and disaster is a personification of these two qualities. Kipling builds them up and inflates them, full of importance, and in the folllowing line, he calls them “two imposters” and therefore destroys their importnace. Here what is trying to say and do with this sentence is that he wants to let people know that in time all your highs and lows will pass and there is no need to assign them so much importance.

13-16 “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:”

The image here of ‘truth’ being twisted in a trap of values like a table collapsing and finally being rebuilt with old-fashioned tools is Kipling’s way of emphasizing that regardless of what kind of a person you are and regardless of the words you say there will be always be people who will try to bring you down and instead of crying about it or giving up you should always rise past these people and keep your values.

17-20 “If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and toss, And lose, and start again at your beginning, And never breathe a word about your loss”

This is a gambling imagery. At first, we might think that Kipling is glorifying gambling. However, what he is really trying to say is that one is able to make gambling a metaphor for taking risks. In fact, Kipling is trying to say that some risks may not necessarily bring you a pay off. However, instead of never taking a chance or giving up after one try, you should always get back up on your feet and try again hence, “…And lose, and start again at your beginning…”

21-24 “If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”

This is another kind of imagery of the body and perhaps of running as well. Kipling creates a powerful image by seperating the heart, nerve and sinew. Although these parts make up the whole body by seperating them, he is suggesting that these different parts of the body are able to work together towards a commmon goal. These body parts working together is Kipling’s way of describing perserverance. The personification of the Will represents your mind. If your mind is able to perservere your body is able to follow.

25-26 “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,”

These first two lines is Kipling’s way of describing how you can maintain your own identity even amongst a large group of people and if you can walk amongst those in power and still reach the majority.

27-28 “If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much.”

These lines is also a lesson he is trying to teach. Here, we see that Kipling is trying to say that often the ones who hurt us the most are the ones we love the most. However, if you are able to maintain self-repsect and dignity even amongst the malicious and if you are able still be friends who will desert you in times of evil.

29-30 “If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,”

These two lines are Kipling’s way of saying to use time wisely. Again, we see an imagery of running. Although one minute doesn’t seem like a lot of time, if we see it as sixty seconds, even if we are able to use all of those sixty seconds to move forwards we would’ve used our time in a manner that makes a lot of difference.

31-32 “Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”

Finally, we get the conclusion. We see here that Kipling is emphasizing his guide to success. He is saying that a person with all these “what if” qualities can achieve that he dreams of because he is the best person that he can be. Furthermore, the emphasis on “Man” suggests that Kipling is contrasting youthfulness and adulthood. Since we associate all of these “what if” qualities with a man, we can assume that a child would have the opposite. However, bear in mind that he is not saying that once you reach a certain age, you will have these “what if” qualities. Instead, he is contrasting all the bad selfish qualities that are associated with those who don’t know anything better with the gradual maturation that he believes everyone must and should go through. In order for us to remember his lessons, for that was what he intended his poem to be, the rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD, to help facilitate these memorization.

Once Upon A TimeLine Quote Explanation

[Title] The title “Once Upon A Time” is usually associated with fairy tales. In this poem, Okara is using this as the title to suggest a sense of longing of a time far into the past and a desire to return to child-like innoncence. As you read through the rest of the poem, you will also begin to realize that “Once Upon A Time” stands for the qualities that Okara believed people used to have, most notably, honesty and expressing emotion as being so rare now that it might not be true anymore. Thus, we see the story-like quality of his poem.

1-6 “Once upon a time, son, they used to laugh with their hearts and laugh with their eyes: but now they only laugh with their teeth, while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow.”

The first line suggests that what the speaker is going to say is like a fairy tale. By beginning with “Once upon a time”, Okara is enhancing the story-like quality of the poem. The next two lines shows the image of laughing with your heart and eyes. However clichéd it might be, it suggests a deeper and more honest emotion. The personification of laughing with her eyes provokes the imagery of the eyes as windows into a soul. Thus by laughing with your heart and eyes, Okara is suggesting a genuity of emotion. The difference between laughing “between teeth” is one of whiteness, expressionless and cold. There is no expression when one is laughing with one’s teeth because there is no emotion. Now we also see that their eyes once warm, are now ‘ice-block-cold’. They are constantly trying to search for things that the narrator could give them. Thus, we see that although they are laughing, their attentions are focused on what is behind the narrator.

7-12 “There was a time indeed they used to shake hands with their hearts: but that’s gone, son. Now they shake hands without hearts while their left hands search my empty pockets.”

The phrasing of the first line of the second stanza suggests an idea of distant recollection. Okara seems to remember a time when people behaved differently. He tries to recall when people showed genuine warmth and sincerity. But now, it’s gone and now, here we see that contrast in that people shook hands “without hearts” while their “left hands search” his “empty pockets”. We see that not only people are not genuine nor sincere, they are also dishonest. Here we also see that the repetition of the phrase “with their hearts” maintains a sense of deliberateness. There is a point to OKara’s story.

13-18 “‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:they say, and when I come

Here we see that Okara is saying that now, people are saying things they don’t mean, reiterating that people are now dishonest. When you take their

again and feelat home, once, twice,there will be no thrice-for then I find doors shut on me.”

words for face value, people will begin to shut you out because those words are merely greetings.

19-24 “So I have learned many things, son. I have learned to wear many faces like dresses – homeface, officeface, streetface, hostface, cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles like a fixed portrait smile.”

This is the beginning of Okara’s personal monologue. We see that his personal narrative shows his own changes as he learns also to disguise his true emotions. He learns how to deal with other people’s dishonesty by becoming just like them. This simile is a comparison, between his different face like wearing them “like dresses”, exemplifies the idea of a series of masks that each of us must wear to deal with all the people we encounter on a daily basis. It demonstrated the idea that all of these faces can be wornd and discarded as needed. Thus, people’s true nature are always hidden. This simile again reiterates the idea of a mask. The imagery of a “fixed potrait smile” suggests stiffness, and fakeness. It is a mask that people always put on and it is bland but no matter how much you try to see past it, their face reveals nothing.

25-32 “And I have learned too to laugh with only my teeth and shake hands without my heart. I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’, when I mean ‘Good-riddance’: to say ‘Glad to meet you’, without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been nice talking to you’, after being bored.”

Again, there is that repetition of the phrase “I have learned” and “without my heart”; demonstrating a sense of deliberateness. He has learned to use hollow greetings to talk to people which emphasizes that the changes he has gone through are not necessarily for the better. He has lost his own identity in favor of becoming like the others. This is also representative of what of the major themes of this poem which is that of racism. These hollow greeting symbolizes Western culture. Okara is saying that by conforming to Western customs, Africans have lost what was good about their own culture.

33-39 “But believe me, son. I want to be what I used to be when I was like you. I want to unlearn all these muting things. Most of all, I want to relearn how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!”

The tone of this stanza is pleading. His hope is in his young son who has not yet lost his innocence. Okara wants to be like his son and he wants to “unlearn all these muting things”. This phrase suggests that his behaviour now actually mutes how he truly feels. The way he is behaving is not how he truly is. In fact, he feels stifled by all these foreign customs. The imagery of snake’s bare fangs suggests that wearing a mask has almost a dangerous quality to it. Because you can’t see a person’s true nature and sometimes, it could end up harming you because you end up trusting their mask instead of who they are.

40-43 “So show me, son,how to laugh; show me howI used to laugh and smileonce upon a time when I was like you.”

The last line “once upon a time” brings the poem around in full circle. It suggests a distant past when the narrator was sincere like his son and it ends on a seeminglhy hopeful quality. The narrator believes that his son can still teach him how to be innocent, that his son who is still genuine holds the key to his being able to relearn these same qualities.

Overall The entire of this poem is regretful; the narrator regrets having learned Western culture and customs to become just like them. He wishes that he could unlearn all of these but because he has forgotten them, he wishes his son whom he believes holds the key to his past and will be able to teach him. However, even though at first it seems that the poem begins from a negative and ends with a positive note, this is not actually the case. What Okara has forgotten is that innocence cannot be learnt; it is a state of mind so that once you lose it, it is gone forever. Thus, the slow pace and descriptiveness of the poem serves to emphasize the lost qualities that can never be regained. As we have mentioned before, one of the major themes is racism. We see of examples of this throughout the poem. The narrator’s son who symbolizes childhood and innocence is also the personification of how Okara sees African culure. He believes that African culture was more open and honest and it was only after the adoption of Western culture that it graudally invaded and eroded all the good qualities that Africans once possessed and that people learned to be dishonest. An example of this is in the hollow greetings that Okara gives us many examples of. This is very much a Western custom which Okara believes is deceitful and incompatible with what he saw as what was the more genuine greetings that Africans give each other. Many of Okara’s other works is also centered around this themes. As a Nigerian poet, the issue of assimilation into Western culture has always been an issue that is Okara’s heart. Clearly, we see that he believes that by conforming to Western civilization, Africans have lost something very precious that they can never get back.

War PhotographerLine Quote Explanation

Title The title tells you what the poem is about. It is about a person who takes

pictures about people who suffer during war. We are introduced to the main character of the poem. It sets the tone of a poem; if you are a war photographer, we already know this peom is going to be serious.

1-2 “In his darkroom he is finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.”

The first two lines sets the tone of foreboding. The first line “in his darkroom he is finally alone.” He is finally able to reflect back on the pictures and he’s taken. There is a feeling of omniousness and suggests the idea of evil and moral darkness. By making the firlst line of the poem, Duffy is telling us that there is no times of happiness during war. “with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.” Sufferring is set out in rows obviously for practical purposes of ease of access for the photographer. The description here conjures up images like graves or bodies waiting to be buried or rows of people thrown into makeshift graves in Nazi concentration camps. By arranging people and suffering in numerical order, we see that death in war becomes only a number. There is a feeling of detachedness here.

3 “The only light is red and softly glows,” Again, the use of color is important. First, we have a sense of evil in the “darkroom” and now red is symbolic of blood. The fact that it “softly glows” also gives a sense of foreboding and gives a sense of evil.

4-6 “as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass. Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.”

The introduction of this religious imagery suggests again a feeling of omniousness and of death. The photographer is now seen as a priest, preparing to intone a Mass which is a religious service which people often attend to grieve for the dead. “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.” These are all names of cities that are all dealing with war and by listing these names, he is saying that he is about to intone a Mass, suggesting that he is mourning for these cities that he has photographed . “All flesh is grass.” is a bibilical quote that suggests, again, a feeling of omniousness. Also it reiterates the idea that he is a priest intoning a Mass. The introduction of the line at the end, suggests that all humans are the same regardless of race, gender, and age. What Duffy is trying to say here is that in death, everyone returns to the earth.

7-9 “He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands which did not tremble then though seem to now.”

Line 7 summarizes up the photographer’s job. It is his responsibility of take pictures of other people’s suffering regardless of how he feels personally; he has no choice but to photograph and develop suffering. “Solutions….though seem to now.” The alliteration of “solution slop”

suggests the overwhelming emotion. The beginning of the second stanza introduces us to the more human side of the photographer. It suggests that when he is alone, he is able to reflect on all the pain and suffering that he is privied to.

9-12 “Rural England. Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, to fields which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat.”

Here we see that contrast between what is happening to warzones and back home. In rural England, people have ordinary pain, which on a good day, can be forgotten and children don’t have to worry about mines exploding beneath their feet. The emjambement of this line highlights, by creating tension and suspense, and contrasts and also emphasizes that the war photographer can go between these worlds, wars versus homes. And as this bridge between the two worlds, he represents the difference between our world and the world of war. This is further emphasized by the imagery Duffy creates, that is, “fields exploding…nightmare heat” where the fires of war is so hot that it burns.

13-15 “Something is happening. A stranger's features faintly start to twist before his eyes, a half-formed ghost.”

The sudden transition of the depiction of warzones to the present when the photographer was developing the pictures brings our attention back to the photographer’s darkroom and his job. “A stranger’s features” this is a again a powerful iamge which also supports the idea of suffering as highlighted by the word “twist” . Of course, the photographer is merely developing the picture, so when they start to show up, it will be faint at first. However, the image created also suggests death. The stranger’s features, his face, his body are faintly twisting. His features are unclear and “twisted” . “A half-formed ghost”. Here Duffy suggests that in times of war, those who die are never truly remembered because they are seen as a statistic by their government. It also suggests that this man died while he was being photographed.

15-18 “He remembers the criesof this man's wife, how he sought approvalwithout words to do what someone mustand how the blood stained into foreign dust.”

Again the use of enjambement here emphasizes tension. The lines here are ambiguous. At first, the cries of this man’s wife could be because her husband has died. A photographer did not receive permission from his wife to take a picture of her husband. However, he felt obligated to photograph those he felt were suffering. Here we have a clue that perhaps this man died because he was a soldier in a foreign field, thus, his “blood stained into foreign dust” or that he was a refugee who was killed as he was fleeing over the border of his country. This is also symbolic of how the photographer

didn’t receive permission from his wife so the blood of this man was “stained” into this foreign photo. A different idea of what could’ve been happening at this time is the ugliness of war. Duffy at this time also creates a picture of rape.This man has died and those who have killed him are now raping his wife. Thus, her cries and her blood stained into foreign dust. It also emphasizes the helplessness of the photographer. His job is to take pictures and he is not enough power to protect those that he photographs. This specific image of one man and his wife somehow holds more meaning in the “spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”. By letting us relate to one man, Duffy has effectively created allowed us to identify suffering on a more personal level.

19-21 “A hundred agonies in black-and-white from which his editor will pick out five or six for Sunday's supplement.”

Again we see the reocurrence of statistics in association of with descriptiosn of suffering and pain. There are “hundred agonies” in which the photographer will present to his editor. However, his editor will only pick out five or six. The idea of the pictures being sifted through, suggests the idea of lack of respect. How does the editor pick out five or six? Furthermore, by only including in Sunday’s supplement, which is an additional supplement once a week on the Sunday paper, the editor is treating these people like commodity. Again, there is the returning motif of color. The contrast between black and white represents many different, all of which can be taken into consideration in the poem. Firstly black and white symbolizes evil and goodness much like how war is evil and peace is goodness. Secondly, it could symbolize right and wrong. Again, reiterating the idea of moral righteousness and moral evilness in war. Thirdly, black and white is symbolic of the photographs being printed and placed for all the world to see. However, as we will see in the next few lines, people tend to be unable to relate to those events which are not close to home.

21-22 “The reader's eyeballs prick with tears between bath and pre-lunch beers.”

The emotion that reader show upon seeing those pictures don’t even warrant sobbing. Instead, they feel pity and so they eyes only “prick” with tears that do not fall. Again, we see the lack of repsect for those who are dying or suffering. Instead of being concerned, these people are slotted not only into the Sunda supplement but also people’s lives betweens the “bath and prelunch beers.” Basically, when they feel like they have time, we see that despite all the suffering, the readers feel no sympathy for these people

because they cannot relate to “a hundred agonies.”23-24 “From aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns a living and they do not care.”Here we see again that the photographer is preparing to leave for his next job. He has left his emotions in the darkroom thus, he is impassive now to the pain and suffering of the people in his photographs. However, the last phrase is powerful because where we see the photographer as feeling obligated to let people know about the suffering that goes on in warzones, we see that these people, in fact, do not care about the suffering that occurs around the world.

[Whole poem] In this poem, one of the main motifs is color as fitting with the color as things being meant for the Sunday supplement. Traditionally, the Sunday supplement newspaper would be colorful in order to attract readers. Thus we see that Duffy also employs the use of color in this poem. There are three emotions present in this poem: The photographer’s, the reader’s and the narrator’s. The narrator clearly is upset by the suffering the photographer has to bear witness to on a daily basis. The readers, in contrast, do not care because it is not something that they can relate to. The narrator, on the other hand, seems disapproving of the neglect of the suffering of people during war. She adopts an almost sarcastic tone in order to emphasize that readers are merely slotting those suffering into their lives whenever they feel like they have the time as we se in the line, “between the bath and pre-lunch beers.”

An Unknown GirlLine Quote Explanation1-4 In the evening bazaar

studded with neonan unknown girlis hennaing my hand.”

“In the evening bazaar” There are many shops that are still open but the one that matters the most to the narrator is one that she is sitting at. “studded with neon” suggest that the bazaar is full of harsh lights. There is no beauty about these neon lights and as we will see later on, it is clearly a contrast between Western culture and Indian culture.

7-9 She is icing my hand,which she steadies with herson her satin-peach knee.

The “icing her hand” The imagery of “icing” suggests that it is merely decorative. Although the girl is taking a lot of care, “icing” is cold. It suggests that it is entirely superficial and that there is no depth to it. “which she steieds with…satin-peach knee” suggests the connection between the

narrator and the unknown girl. At the moment, the girl provides a base and something familiar to the narrator.

12-17 an unknown girlis hennaing my hand.As a little air catchesmy shadow-stitched kameez*a peacock spreads its linesacross my palm.

There are many reminders of the beauty of India, of the vibrateness and exoticness. The peacock is traditionally associated with beauty and royalty and is not normally seen in the Western world. “My shadow stitched kameez.” Here we see that contrast between the bazaar and the narrator’s clothes. The unknown girl is wearing a satin peach outfit; bright clothes that is in direct contrast to the shadowy kameez that the narrator is wearing. This is also symbolic of the Eastern vs. Western culture.

18-22 Colours leave the streetfloat up in balloons.Dummies in shop-frontstilt and starewith their Western perms.

Again we see that importance of color. In Indian cultures, colors were very important to highlight their vibrancy. For example, the narrator seems to be writing about holi, the most colorful festival in India where colors are splashed around everywhere. This is something that Indians use to celebrate. However, the Western dummies in the shop windows appear to be disapproving. Again, we see that in contrast, Westenr society seems to be fixed and rigid like the dummies who are always immaculetly presented.

23-26 Banners for Miss India 1993,for curtain clothand sofa clothcanopy me.

In these lines suggests that the narrator is sitting in the centre of Indian culture. Also, we see that the narrator has chosen something that seems to be almost deliberately familiar, that of the banner of Miss India. This is clearly a link to the American version of Miss United States and it is something that the narrator feels comfortable with. Although, she seems to try to learn about Indian culture, she also seems apprehensive. Thus, we see examples of this in terms of the narrator’s tone in the poem. Firstly, she is blocked by the language barrier. She does not know how to ask the girl for her name. Thus, she continues to call this girl an unknown throughout her poem.

27-31 I have new brown veins.In the evening bazaarvery deftlyan unknown girlis hennaing my hand.

Again we see the superficiality of the narrator. She believes herself to have new “brown veins” which is symbolic of Indian-ness.

32-35 I am clingingto these firm peacock lineslike people who cling

Again we see that there is an idea that the narrator is fearful of the unknown. She seems to constantly always seek areas she is comfortable in. Thus, we see her clinging to these peacock lines” as everything around her

to the sides of a train. slowly changes, not dissimiiar the unknown girl needing to steady her in a time when everything is changing and the way the narrator tries to sit in familiar surroundings. The imagery of clinging suggests a sense of desperation and hopelessness. The narrator seems to both want to understand Indian culture and is fearful of its alienness.

36-37 Now the furious streetsare hushed.

Here the furious streets are “hushed” seems to mean that the festival is now over and people will return to their jobs and their lives in a respectable manner. Not only does this represent the wild gathering of people during holi, it also represents the conflict and tension that arises between India and the West.

38-40 I’ll scrape offthe dry brown linesbefore I sleep,

These four lines represent the beauty of India that cannot be seen on the surface. Superficially, we may think that India is a developing country. However, it also acts as a symbol the idea that beauty cannot be seen on the surface. It provides a contrast between the Western dummies nad their perms and the bountiful nature of Indian culture that cannot be seen on the surface. However, it seems that the narrator does not place too much importance on the beauty because she is merely scraping it off before she goes to bed.

41-43 reveal soft as a snail trailthe amber bird beneath.It will fade in a week.

This line which again emphsizes the richness and vibarteness of the culture that is India, it is also use to foreshadow the events that occur. The beauty of India, says the narrator, will fade withing a week and although we don’t know yet why, it seems that it is unavoidable.

44-48 When India appears and reappearsI’ll lean across a countrywith my hands outstretchedlonging for the unknown girlin the neon bazaar.

The last lines expresses the narrator’s desire to learn and preserve Indian culture. However, she is not proactive about this desire. She is stating a fact that Indian culture will be assimilated into Western culture. However, she still longs for the innocence that India represents even though she knows that the country will change. This line also has historical refreneces. We can assume that this is written during the time when England colonized India. The induction of Western culture into Indian culture seems, to the narrator, will forever change the induction and direction of Indian culture. Thus, we see that the narrtor is already hoping for something in the past.

[Whole poem] One of the biggest motifs is the repetition of the unknown girl. Why is she of such improtance to the narrator? Why odes the narrator continuously emphasize that she has met this unknown girl in the bazaar? We see that

again this unknown girl is symbolic of the purity and innocence of Indian culture before it was violated by Western culture. This unknown girl with her satin-peach knee is, in the narrator’s eyes, simple and innocent. The narrator, in contrast, is distracted and constantly apprehensive and seeking to validate Western culture in India so she herself can be more comfortable. For example, by acquiescing to the Western culture stereotype of wearing stiff and bland clothing as seen as her shadow kameez. On the other hand, she is also allured by the bright colors of India. She also wants to be able to experience Indian at it’s fullest and we see her dabbling in this by getting hennaed.

DisabledLine Quote Explanation1 He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, This already lets you know that this man is disabled. He is waiting for the

dark, he can be a whole and he can remember the days when he ran and played like the boys in the park.

2-3 And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

Why is this a ghastly suit of grey. In the past, when people lost limbs, it was common practice for people to sew together the sleeves where the limbs was. The man has only one arm. The color of grey is also important. It represents sickness and old age. The word “shivered” also gives us a clue of where he is. He is clearly outside and perhaps it is starting to get dark so it is chilly.

4-6 Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymnVoices of play and pleasures after day,Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him

The voices of the young boys playing in the park don’t bring him happiness. It makes him sad. The simile “like a hymn” suggests that because a hymn is a religious song, the man is already thinking about death. Again, the pictures created by the poem seems to be one of death and hopelessness. “Till gathering…” Sleep , in this instance, is presented in a positive light. By sleeping, he doesn’t need to listen to the boys playing in the park. The personification here suggest that he is more comfortable in the dark or sleeping so that he doesn’t need to remember that he is disabled.

7-9 About this time Town used to swing so gayWhen glow-lamps buckled in the light-blue trees,And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim–

This suggests that he is thinking about the times before he “threw away his knees” , he used to go dancing with the girls. It also suggests that girls tended to like boys whom they thought were war heroes. “as the air grew

dim” Again we have the repetition of the idea of waiting for dark. However, in this instance, we see the contrast between the second stanza and the first stanza. In the first one, the darkness prevents other from seeeing his disability. In the second stanza, the darkness represents his readyness to go out with girls he thinks are pretty.

10-13 In the old times, before he threw away his knees.Now he will never feel again how slimGirls’ wasts are, or how warm their subtle hands;All of them touch him like some queer disease

When he went to war, he ‘threw away knees” as exemplified by his being his legless as noted in the first stanza. It also suggests that girl liked the idea of a war hero or of a man in a suit, they didn’t like the idea of a disabled returning war veteran. It also represents how the man also sees himself as only half a man and how he will never experience the love of a woman because he is disabled and is not even a man.

14-15 There was an artist silly for his face,For it was younger than his youth, last year.

What the poet is trying to say here and the add-in of “last year” emphasizes that this man is no longer young and is no longer the youth that he once was. Even though he couldn’t be more than 22 years of age, Owen is trying to evoke the idea that war ages you. This girl, who happened to be an artist, liked his face for it was a boyish face. Now, however, his face is no longer the boyish face that it once was. His face had been hardened by war, by the death he had seen up close.

16 Now, he is old; his back will never brace; This suggests another disability. In war, he has been hurt so much that he could never straighten his back. It also suggests, metaphorically, because he has seen war, his back will not “brace” for anything else.

17 He’s lost his colour very far from here, He lost his colour suggests that he lost a lot of blood. “very far from here” suggests that he was shipped overseas to some unknown war.

18-20 Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,And leap of purple spurted from his thigh

These graphic images let us see the true nature of war. His life and his colour he has given into shell-holes. These holes after the bomb exploded one of them may have hit him and he found refuge in one of these holes but he bled so much he didn’t have any blood left. In that instance, he lost his youthfulness. “Leap of purple…” When he was he was hit by that shell, it probably lodged deep into his leg so that they had to amputate it and you could see the purple vein in his leg.

21-28 On time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,After the matches, carried shoulder-highIt was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,He thought he’d better join. –He wonders why.

A long time ago, he liked the idea of being a war hero but he now wonders why he wanted to enlist in the first place. He thinks that perhaps it was after a football match when he won and he was drunk on the feeling that he won. He wonders if he was hihg off the feeling of having people admire

Someone had said he’d look a god in kiltsThat’s why, and maybe, too, to please his Meg;Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jiltsHe asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;

him and he wonders if he was drunk when he enlisted for the army. He looks back and tries to figure out why he enlisted. Was it because someone said that he looked like a “god in kilts”, again emphasizing that he was very boyish and handsome in his youth. But, he says, when he thinks back (this stanza is him reflecting on his decision), it was to please “his Meg” who he later finds out to be a jilt (girl who is really fickle changes her mind a lot). One of his biggest reasons was that he liked girls and girls admired him and since girls liked war veterans, he joined the army so he could feel like a hero. The last line is important because that in time of war, they are desperate to have men join the army that they didn’t ask for his qualifications, they just signed him up, no questions asked.

29-36 Smiling, they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fearsOf Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hiltsFor daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;Esprit des corps; and hints for young recruitsAnd soon he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

He lied about his age and said that he is nineteen years old, which shows us that is is younger than ninteen years old. “German…yet” This suggests that when he joined the war, he was not really thinking about who he was fighting for and who he was fighting. It suggests that he joined without truly understanding what war meant, as seen in the line “no fears/Of Fears yet.” He only thought of “jewelled hilts” which are small decorative knives that the Scottish would attach to the top of their stocking. “For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes…recruits” What he is thinking of is the glorified version of war. He is thinking already of back-pay and the feeling of pride and honor that he has been told what happen in war. He is thinking of returning from war and feeling like a hero and feeling glorified. “And soon…cheers.” It seems that the first part of dreams and hopes about war seemed to come true, people cheered him on because he is strong and the people also believed in the glories of war, which they saw embodied in him.

37-39 Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.Only a solemn man who brought him fruitsThanked him; and then inquired him about his soul.

Even though his send off was accompanied by drums and cheers, when he returned, no one wanted to see a broken-down war veteran. In times of war, the only way a nation can justify particupating a war is by glorifyuing it, not to see broken-down war veterans returning. Because no one at home truly understood the horrors of war, no one cheered hime home, except for one man who may have also been in war himself. Line 39: this man is grateful that this former youthful person has given up his youth and half of his life for this war and he wonders how this man will now fare and whether or not his faith is still intact.

40-46 Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,And do what things the rules consider wise,And take whatever pity they may dole.Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyesPassed from him to the strong men that were whole.How cold and late it is! Why don’t they comAnd put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

“Now …dole” The institutes that he will spend his sick years are war hospitals were they will take care and experiment on him and finally discharge him when nothing works. The use of the word “pity” is used in such a way like the pill they give him in the Institutes; that they “dole out” for him to take. Line 43-44: Again he is lamenting that he will never experience the love of a woman. No one wants a cripple and although it is possible that the women see him this way, it also could be said that he too sees himself this way. The last two lines show signs of self-pity and patheticness. He is again lamenting that his decisions as a youth, he will no longer experience the touch of a woman nor marriage because no one would want him. He is cold and alone in the dark but no one comes for him.

The TygerLine Quote Explanation1-4 Tyger, Tyger, burning bright.

In the forests of the night:What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?

“Tyger” Romanticism element .The first two lines are a couplet, which introduces to us the main object of this poem. This tiger that Blake perhaps encounters in the forest “burns brightly” The alliteration “burning bright” suggest an almost harsh quality to the tiger. Not only does he stand out in the night, he glows, radiating a kind of brightness that might not necessarily be good. Line 3 gives us a hint of what Blake is talking about; “immortal hand or eye” is supposed to be representative of God. The tiger’s ferociousness and wildness suggests to Blake, that he could not have been created by God. But what other creator could “frame thy fearful symmetry”, which suggests the duality of good vs. evil. The idea of a tiger is the idea of duality and symmetry because even in the first couplet., the idea of “burning bright” is the orange pelt on the tiger and the “forests of the night” is the black stripes. For Blake, the tiger represents both brightness and darkness. We see that in the second couplet, he asks who it was that created the tiger’s this kind of duality.

5-8 In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare seize the fire?

“Distant deeps” is Blake’s another way of saying Hell and the “distant skies” are an allusion to heaven. The idea of the fire in “burnt the fire” gives the idea of acrafts. Blake here is asking where or who was the maker of the tiger. Was it in Hell or was it in Heaven? Again the idea of “fire” in the tiger’s

eyes is an allusion to the idea that the tiger blazes in the night. The last couplet in the second stanza suggests that given where or who made the tiger, the tiger could either be good or evil. The ferocity of the tiger seems to suggest to Blake that the tiger was made by the Devil because who else could create such ferocity and wildness of the tiger.

9-12 And what shoulder, & what art,Could twist the sinews of they heart?And ty heart began to beat,What dread hand? & what dread grasp?

Again this third stanza is still asking who the creator of the tiger is. Who was it that could make the tiger ferocious? Was it God? In this case, the tiger would be good. Was it the Devil? In this case, the tiger would be evil. After creating in the tiger’s heart goodness or evil, who guided the tiger to be what he was? The end of the third stanza suggests that Blake seems to think it was the Devil. The repetition of “dread” and the similar phrasing gives us the impression of the Devil because the feeling of terror that the tiger clearly inspires in Blake suggests that he thinks that it was because of the Devil’s awful, evil hand and his clawed feet that created the tiger. We know that it was the Devil because in the past, although the Devil had many disguises, the one thing he cannnot hide are his clawed feet.

13-16 What the hammer? What the chain,In what furnace was thy brain?What the anvil? What dread graspDare it deadly terrors clasp!

Again this suggests the idea of a craftsman. The hammer, the chain, the furnace and the anvil gives us a hint of the role of God and also of Satan. Was it the furnace of heaven or the furnace of Hell?

17-20 When the stars threw down their spearsAnd waterd heaven with their tears:Did he smile his work to see?Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

The last line is a reference the Biblical idea that God is a shepherd. The lamb, who was a gentle creature, was made by God. Was God the one who made such a ferocious creature. Again we see that towards the end of the poem, Blake is thinking that it may have been God who created the tiger. The personfication of stars “threw down their spears” also suggest that in the war between God and Satan’s evil creations even the stars so high up in the heavens did not see even who it was that created the tiger.

21-24 Tyger, Tyger burning bright,In the forests of the night:What immortal hand or eyeDare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The almost exact repetition of the first stanza again shows that although Blake seems to have accepted the dual nature of the tiger again seems to wonder who it was that created him. Again, he is raising the old philosophical question of whether evil exists because God created or whether evil exists because God is not powerful.

[whole poem] The Tyger is a poem written by William Blake in six quartrains, made up in two couplets each. The major themes that are present throughout the

poem are good vs. evil and God vs. Satan. The symmetry of the tiger represents the idea of good vs. evil. Blake sees the duality of both in the tiger. While the tiger is ferocious in nature, Blake seems to think that depending on who created the tiger, the tiger could be either good or evil. Again we have this idea of why God would allow the existence of evil if God is all-good and all-powerful but like Blake’s suggestion that the tiger has potential for either/or, he also seems to suggest by letting the tiger be what he is, God is all-good because He gives the tiger the freedom to be who he is. Which brings us to the idea of heroism. The development of the tiger or what the tiger represents is not dissimiliar to the development of a hero. The birth of a hero, like the birth of the tiger, suggests that the hero is a bright blaze of hope in times of hoplessness in times of darkness. However, because God gave us freedom of choice, the hero does not neccearily grow up to be good. Like the tiger, the hero has the potential to be either but it depends on the choices that he makes.

Do not go gentle into that good nightLine Quote Explanation

[Title] Night here is representative of the later stages of life, when everything begins to fade away and grow dim. So we see that this poem is not about someone walking into the night but rather, it is about old age and dying.

1-3 Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The first stanza of the poem perhaps sets up the thesis of the rest of the poem. Instead of accepting that you are dying and aging, Thomas seems to think that you should fight for your will to survive. The idea of burning and raving at close of day suggests that Blake believes that in old age, one should never be content to just die, whether it is through complaining or through anger, those who are about to die should not just slip unnoticed into death.

4-6 Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightining theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

These next four stanzas serve as Thomas’ way of introducing four different types of people who are also at the brink of death. Thomas suggest that in the first of these men, the wise men should not slip unnoticed even though that the dark, which is a metaphor for death, is right because they left no

inspiration behind. This is seen by the line “Because their words forked no lightning”. This metaphor for inspiration is Thomas’ way of emphasizing that before one dies, one must leave some kind of legacy or some kind of inspiration that would be noticed by others.

7-9 Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage aginst the dying of the light.

The good men, according to Blake, who know that their end is near, also do not slip away unnoticed especially if they realize that the deeds that they thought were so significant before actually did not end up counting anything . These men, too, like the wise men too fight for their survival so they can leave some kind of legacy befind. The phrase “the last wave by” suggest that Thomas think that there are also no more good men anymore and these last few know that it is their duty to have their names written down in history as one who has accomplished something great.

10-12 Wild men, who caugh and sang the sung in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.

The phrase “wild men” instead suggest that people hwo in their youth, cared not for their names and in fact, found out too late that they themselves would one day die. The imagery of “caught and sang the sun in flight” suggest that they who are so happy and so joyful that even the sun, so far out of reach, wanted to have fun with them. However, evne these men who left no mark in the world do not regret all the fun they had while they were young.

13-15 Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Grave men has one meaning: men who are so close to death that death might come to them at any moment, and because of their age, have lost their sight. But even then, they fight with their disabilities for the will to survive because at any moment, they might be given a chance to find happiness.

16-19 And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Here, in the final stanza, that Thomas has actually written this poem to his father whom is close to dying and is in his old age. Apparently, his father has decided to go “gentle into that good night” because Thomas is begging his father to curse him or bless him and fight. Because Thomas is using the examples he used previously, serves to convince his father that despite everything, one must fight for their survival.

[Whole Poem] “Do not go gentle into that good night” is a plea from Thomas to his dying father to fight for his will to survive. The style of the poem is a villanelle which is 5 3-line stanzas and 1 4-line stanza. The first five stanzas follow the rhyme scheme of ABA and the last one ABAA. However, note that Thomas is

not saying that death is bad, he refers it to “good night”, he understands that the way of life but he believes people should not accept death so easily.

“Out, Out – “ Line Quote Explanation

[Title] The title of this poem does not refer to anything in the poem because the word “out” only appears twice in the poem. In fact it is a Shakespearean reference. Frost is referring a quote from Macbeth “Out, out brief candle/Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/and then is heard no more.” This was in reference to Lady Macbeth’s death in which in her solilquoy, she compared life to a candle. Why this is the title, as we will see later on, is that he introduces similar ideas about death in his poem.

1-3 The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of woodSweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

The personification of the buzz saw in the first line that it “snarled and rattled” already gives it a ferocious appearance. We don’t know if something ominious is going to happen but it eems that the buzz saw is like a wild animal in the otherwise tranquil of scene of sweet-scented wood being chopped up, the buzz saw is something that stands out as terrifying. We also see that the purpose of chopping down these trees are for mankind’s survival. We need it for firewood and so we enlist the help of this ferocious buzz saw to help us with the work.

5-6 Five mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont

This pictoresque view of the five mountain ranges is actaully a Biblical quote which suggests the wonderment of God’s creation if you lift your eyes up and are amazed by the wonderment of God. Note that the element of nature is important in Frost’s poems as he uses it to highlight important themes.

7-9 And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.And nothing happened…

The repetition of “snarled and rattled” again is a personification of the saw suggests that it is very much a sentient being that men would have a difficult time to control. It also suggests that everytime it had to bear a load, which in this case, it was a barrel of log, it snarled. Again this suggests that the saw is very much opposed to having to cut wood.

9 …day was all but done This phrase foreshadows events that are about to happen. It evokes a

feeling of omniousness10-12 Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.

Here we are introduced to another character other than the buzz saw who we now learn that he is the one cutting the wood. The tone of these few lines seems to be regretful. However, we do not yet know why. Will something happen to the boy while he is at work?

13-16 His sister stood beside them in her apronTo tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap –

Again the saw’s personified here. After a day’s work, the saw also seems to be hungry. The disturbing image of the saw eating the boy’s or at least just cutting into it, though because the saw’s personified, creates a grotesque image suggest that the saw is also spiteful. Referring back to the idea that Frost often uses imagery of nature to highlight a point, we see here that given that the boy has been murdering trees all day, ie. Cutting them, cuts into the boy as though it is nature’s way of revenge.

17-22 He must have given the hand. However it was,Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laughAs he swung toward them holding up the hand, Half in Appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling…

Because of the boy’s slip, the saw has apparently cut very deeply into his hand. At first, he seems to think that it was not serious. The exclamation after the phrase is representative of the boy’s initial shock at feeling his skin sliced open and although he referred to as a boy, he is still old enough to understand to keep his blood from spilling out. However, the reference that his “life” was spilling suggests that it was already too late. Here we understand why the tone of the line “Call it a day, I wish they might have said” seems to be regretful. Had they given the boy a break and had they let him off early, he would have been still alive today.

22-25 …Then the boy saw all–Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man’s work,though a child at heart–He saw all spoiled…

Here we see the reference to the boy caught in between boyhood and manhood. Clearly, the boy would like to be considered a man hence, why he is doing a man’s work and though he is still a boy at heart, he is able to see that because of all the bleeding, it is too late for him already.

25-34 … “Don’t let him cut my hand off–The doctor when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”So. But the hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then–the watcher at his pulse took fright.No one believed. They listened at his heart.Little–less–nothing! –and that ended it.No more to build on there. And they, since they

The sudden change of tone after the word “So” suggest the brief, frantic moment in which they tried to save the boy’s life. And the boy, also knowing that he is about to die, wants to die a whole and not missing a limb. This change of tone signifies either that like its namesake, “Out, Out–“ Frost is suggesting that death is not something to be mourned over, and the living should keep on living or that the lack of pomp and circumstance following the boy’s death shows how meaningless his existence was and how the living lacked respect for the dead.

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.[whole poem] One of the themes is nature. The role that nature plays in this poem is

important. It seems to suggest that given that man needs to survive by killing things in nature, the death of the boy was a result of a vengeful nature who took the life of the boy for his taking the life of its trees. Another theme, of course, is that of death. From the title of the poem, it seem that Frost is suggesting that regardless of what you did and what you were like as a person, in death, everyone becomes the same, that is, their lives automatically become meaningless and living continue to carry on living. It could also mean that Frost laments the lack of respect for the dead. Despite the fact that he was only a boy, by treating his life a meaningless, he becomes just another nameless person who has dies unnecessarily due to circumstances beyond his control. The last theme is a little bit less obvious. The death of the boy could also symbolize the death of countless thousand young boys during the war. Much like the boy’s relatives who get on with their lives after his death so to the other soldier’s after one of their own. For them, it is only a matter of whether or not they are able to carry out their duties. Like their relatives, they are no longer able to do anything for the dead and so, they must move on with their lives.

La Belle Dame sans Merci. A BalladLine Quote Explanation

[Title] The title of the poem means the “Beautiful woman without mercy” and it tells us what style of poem Keats is going to write in, which is a folk ballad. The poem is split into three parts with the second split into IIA and IIB.

1-4 O what can ail thee, knight-at arms,Alone and palely loitering?The sedge has withered from the lake,And no birds sing.

We are introduced to two different characters: one is an anonymous person who encounters this knight in a wasteland. We assume that this bystander is describing the knight as he sees him accurately and without embellishments. Line 1-2 describes the knight’s condition, he is alone and pale and is waiting in this wasteland. “Loitering” has suggested that he has been there for a while. “Palely loitering” means that his condition is detrimental and that he like a ghost. The “sedge” is usually seen in the marshes and is a type of grass that grows in the marsh. Even the marshland

give out an empty feeling has dried up and withered away. The grass that is most often found in the marshes is dried and withered. The marshes have no birds that sing but they are not behaving in a way that is normal for birds because the lake is probably dried up now.

5-8 Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,So haggard and so woe-begone?The squirrel’s granary is full,And the harvest’s done.

The repition of first two lines is known as an incremental repitition as it is not exactly the same. This is a common feature of folk ballads and this is used to help listeners remember the song. Line 6 describes the physical and emotional aspect of the knight. He is tired and drawn as well as sad and hopeless. The squirrel has stored up seeds and nuts for the winter. We find out the time period which may reflect the knight’s mental state. People have pulled up their crops and the squirrels have stored up for the winter. The last two lines of stanza I and II represent an alternative to the knight’s condition. Even though he is in a place where everything around him is dead, he also has a choice to not be there; the alternative to the choice that the knight has chosen is something that is more fulfilling and full than his current condition.

The anonymous speaker (Stanza I and II) The point of having this anonymous speaker in general is to give us different readings of the poem. First of all, this anonymous speaker can be taken at face value. He is indeed a random passerby who happens upon this knight and asks him why he is so alone and haggard, etc . However, as readers, we must take his word and we must assume that he is telling the truth about the knight and that he is giving us an accurate representation of the knight’s condition. In other words, we don’t know if the knight is alone and “palely loitering” or how haggard and woe-begone he is. The second thing we must deal with is whether the knight actually exist for this anonymous speaker. As we will see later on, elements of imagination and enchantment are present throughout the poem. If the knight does not in fact exist, then this wanderer might have imagined this knight and is describing his imagination to us. In this case, the reading of the poem will become completely different. Instead of being a poem or ballad about a love-lorn knight, it becomes a poem about the imaginings of a madman.

9-12 I see a lily on thy brow,With anguish moist and fever-dew,And on thy cheek a fading rose

The third stanza is still in the voice of the anonymous speaker and describes the knight’s physical appearance and mental state. Line 9 compares a knight pallor to a white lily. The use of nature in the third stanza also shifts from

Fast withereth too. the first two. In the first two stanzas, nature is used literally and describes the surroundings of the knight. Here, allusions to nature is used figuratively. Not only is a knight’s pallor compared to a lily, the flower lily is also a symbol of death. Line 10 describes the knight’s misery and perhaps also the perspiration of the effort of staying alive. In line 11-12 describes roses, a symbol of beauty, so the knight might have been very handsome in his youth. However, this beauty is now fading so the rose of his beauty is withering. The signficance of using “fading” and “fast withereth” suggest that the knight is not yet dead nor has he completely lost his youth and he is in his last vestiges of youth and life. Thus, his condition, is one in which death is approaching quickly.

13-16 I met a lady in the meads,Full beautiful – a faery’s child,Her hair was long, her foot was light,And her eyes were wild.

Now we see a shift in voice; the knight is answering the questions of the speaker. This is the first half of the second part of the ballad (IIA). The knight is describing when he first meets “La Belle Dame”. He meets this lady in the meadow which contrasts the environment he is in now wh. The lady is apparently the epitome of beauty, so much that she is a “faery’s child”. Aready we have an element of supernatural in Keat’s poem. Line 15-16 can be said to be an early warning sign of la belle dame. We see that la belle dame is a representation of enchantment and imagination. She is something that is not in the realm of the knight’s understanding. He is human but she is not.

17-20 I made a garland for her head,And bracelet’s too, and fragrant zone;She looked at me as she did love,And made sweet moan.

The knight in face upon encountering this beautiful woman decides to woo her. He makes a garland out of perhaps wild flowers for her head and “fragrant zone” suggests that everything the knight made for her is out of flowers. The second half of this stanza may be seen as the knight’s delusion. Line 19 suggests that the lady may not love him but looked as though she loved him. This idea of sweet moan in the knight’s delusion suggests that she loves him but because he is deluded could mean that she does not have feelings for him as he is human and she is a faery. Again, this idea of enchantment.

21-14 I set her on my pacing steed,And nothing else saw all day long,For sidelong would she bend, and singA faery’s song.

The knight here is still dominant and he sets her on this pacing steed. This suggests an idea of strength and power. In his world, he is only with this faery lady. But if we take it literally, it could be a sign of enchantment and strangeness. This again suggest the idea of enchantment. Because of her

supernatural character, she has already enchanted the knight but he can’t understand it because she is a faery and he is a knight. However, if the knight was only imagining this woman, (this will be elaborated on more later) it could mean that it is art inspired by imagination. Again we have a elemtnt of supernatural. We see that la belle dame is not of the knight’s natural world.

25-29 She found me roots of relish sweet,And honey wild, and manna-dewAnd sure in languages strange she said –‘I love thee true’.

Now this is the second half of the second part of the poem. Where the knight was dominant before, the woman has taken control. Again we are reminded that la belle dame is not of the knight’s world. She is something that is more primal and unnatural so she is ‘wild” Manna-dew is a reference to the Bible where while the Israelites were wandering the desert after they were freed by the Egyptians, God sent them “dew” from the heavens to quench their thirst. It seems impossible that the knight would understand la belle dame if she spoke her own language, so it is possible that the lady communicated the idea to him in his own language with an accent. However, it could also mean that he was mistaken by what she said. The idea of her speaking in a lanaguage strange suggests a failure of communication. Because they are so different, the knight in incompatible with la belle dame. However, by this point, the knight is completely enraptured and absorbed by this woman.

29-32 She took me to her elfin grotAnd there she wept and sighed full sore,And there I shut her wild wild eyes,With kisses four.

“Elfin grot” means a grotto, a small enclave in the middle of the woods. Line 30 seems to be in contrast of what she told the knight before. We have this idea of dualing elements that contrasts with what the knight tells us of his lady love. Throughout these five stanzas we are constantly remmindied of the wild nature of la belle dame. Because she is “wild”, we see that her nature and her idea of love could be swift and changing as nature. If that is true, the knight is clearly self-deluded.

33-36 And there she lulled me asleepAnd there I dreamed – Ah! woe betide! –The latest dream I ever dreamtOn the cold hill side.

Even though the knight previously that he closed her wild eyes with kisses, he is not kissing her asleep. La belle dame remains the dominant role. The knight is under her power and her spell. In this we see a shift into the third and last part of Keat’s poem. As she lulls him to sleep, and we are not sure why she does that, but now, he receives in the form of his dream or perhaps her enchantmeant. “Woe betide!” is an exclamation similar to “Oh No!” The latest dream means the last dream that he as ever dreamt. Now we also see

a shift in surroundings. Where he is previously in a beautiful grotto, he is now transported to a cold hillside. This expulsion from the faery’s grotto symbolizes the expulsion of the faery’s love. If we take this poem at face value, this suggest that la belle dame has used the knight for her own purposes and now does not need him anymore and so leaves him.

37-40 I saw pale kings and princes, too,Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;The cried – ‘La Belle Dae snas MerciThee hath in thrall!’

The second half of the second part is talking about the knight’s dream. He dreams of men in power and acheivement which therefore associates them with him, who are past lovers are la belle dame whom she has destroyed. Like the knight, these previous lovers of la belle dame have been destroyed by their love for him. Here we see that la belle dame can be deliberately destructive and her past love have deathly pale and have died because they have pined away from her. Again “death-pale” reminds us of the knight’s condition whe nthe speaker happened upon him. The knight has a lily on his brow and his youth is fast withering. Soon, he will become like those past lovers, who pined away for her.

41-44 I saw their starved lips in the gloam,With horrid warning gaped wide,And I awoke and found me here,On the cold hill’s side.

“Gloam” means twilight. In the twilight, he sees their “starved lips’. This suggests that the woman feeds the knight and perhaps also her past lovers doesn’t in fact nourish them but starves them. Line 42 suggests a grotesque image of the downfall of these men who were once also lovers of la belle dame. This grotesqueness of these men who manifests themselves after she lulls him to sleep perhaps also suggests that they are still under her spell. The consequences of their love is something that the knight must have come to expect something for himself. This basically suggests after using the knight, she has expelled him from the grotto or taken the grotto and left.

45-48 And this is why I soujourn hereAlone and palely loiteringThough the sedge is withered from the lake,And no birds sing.

The idea of “sojourn” suggests that he will be there for some time. The repetition of the first few stanzas suggests and circularity of the poem. Although the knight has not moved physically since the beginning of the poem, he has been moved emotionally.

The knight The second person that we meet in this the knight-at-arms. In depending on how you see this poem, you can read this story different ways,too. Obviously, you can take this at face value, he does meet a beautiful who is a faery’s child in the meadows. She does enchant him into loving her and uses his love and finally discards him. This type of reading suggests that she is

deliberately destructive. This idea of destructive love is very common in folk ballads and it might be a theme that Keats is trying to emulate. The second kind of reading we could do is that this woman, la belle dame, does not actually exist except in the knight’s imagination. Here we have the theme of imagination vs reality. The knight, because he is in the cold world of reality (“sedge has withered from the lake”, “cold hill”), he escapes to the world of his imaginations where he is strong and is in control. He is enchanted by his imaginings because it is, in his mind, a more fulfilled life than the one he leads. Because of this, we see the progression of living in of the world of his imaginations. First, the knight is in control of the world of his imaginations. He is, the man that he always wanted to be, with a beautiful woman and a powerful horse. However, we see that he get more and more absorbed by his imaginations, he begins to lose control of his imaginary world. Instead of him directing his imagination, his imagination is controlling him. Because he has only sustaining himself in his dreams, this is in face incompatible with reality, thus his dreams crumble. His final “dream” of the pale kings and princes acts as a warning that he cannot live in his created world forever and so he is forced to wake up to cold reality. However, he is still unwilling to let go of his fantasy world. Instead of choosing the alternative fulfilling life, he sojourns on the cold hill and pines after the world that he created.

La belle dame We already know that la belle dame is significant in that she is the driving force in the poem. However, we only know her through the knight’s image of her. She could be the deliberately destructive faery woman as he makes her out to be or she could represent the delusion of imagination.

Sonnet 116 ‘Let me not to the marriage’Line Quote Explanation1-2 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments;There aren’t reasons why two people who are not in love should not marry. This is also an allusion to what people say when they get maried – when they say “Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.”

2-3 Love is not loveWhich alters when alteration finds.

Love is not love when it changes with different circumstances. It should always be the same (true love).

1-3 Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,

The first three lines are the constant of love – it is constant and steady.

4 Or bends with the remover to remove: It doesn’t bend from its stance even the lover is unfaithful. It means that it doesn’t deviate from its course even if the lover doesn’t love you anymore (departed)

5-6 O no! it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is constant – and “ever fixed mark” like house. It is a reference to Othello when he talks about how much he loves Desmonda “my light is shining like a lighthouse, ever shining…” Love can survive all crises. It sees storms but it doesn’t break or bend.

7 It is the star to every wandering bark, The star reference is Polaris, the North Star, and the North Star is the star that guide a sailor. Shakespeare is saying that love is like a star that guides all who are lost. The reference to the star can be found in Much Ado About Nothing and Julius Caear. Shakespeare has a habit of referencing his other plays and poems in all of his works

8 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. The comparison of love to a North Star, that you might be able to calculate the height but never find out the value. This is also true of love in the sense that you could find some way to measure someone’s love but ne ver know the value.

9-10 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love does not get old with Time. The comparison of time to the reaper. For Shakespeare, Love is the emotional thing, not the physical. Even as you age because aas you age, your physical beauty will diminish, and as you near death, the grim reaper’s “sickle” will take away your beauty but not your love.

11-12 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Love does not change by hours or weeks but instead it endures for the rest of your life. “Edge of doom” = Doomsday. This is referenced in Henry IV.

13-14 If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This basically says that if he is proved wrong, than he takes back everything he says and no one has ever loved.

[whole poem] Basically in writing this, Shakespeare doesn’t any fancy language because he is trying to express love in its most ideal form. Therefore, what he is writing uses simplistic for his time so that everyone can understand and that love shouldn’t be overly complicated. In fact, this poem glorifies lovers who have

come to each other freely and there is no strangeness in it except for the strangeness of perfection which Shakespeare thinks is love.

Electricity comes to Cocoa BottomLine Quote Explanation

[Title] The town of Cocoa Bottom is exotic and the people of this town are not used to electricity.

1-2 Then all the children of Cocoa Bottomwent to see Mr Samuel’s electric lights

In their eyes, Mr Samuel is miracle-worker and is God-like because he has created this magical thing that no one has ever seen before.

3-6 They camped on the grass bank outside his house,their lamps filled with oil,waiting for sunset,watching the sky turn yellow, orange.

We see the contrast between the oil lamps and the electric lights. They are obciously creating an audience for him because they are excited about this magical thing. The writer suggests that Mr Samuel is perhaps a very priveliged man because he is the only one with the electric lights. By this point in the poem , we are wondering where these children are coming from. As this story takes place in Jamaica, we can assume that perhaps Mr Samuel is the owner or the master of these children. Electricity is something that represents modern civilizaiton and new techology with the children treat as a miracle. It creates a sense of exoticness and they are watching the contrast of the natural light with Mr Samuel’s electric light.

7-8 Grannie Patterson across the roadpeeped through the crack in her porch door

Grannie Patterson belongs to the older generation. The fact that she “peeks through the crack..” suggests that she is doubtful of this new technology. Even though she is doubtful of this new technology, she is curious enough to want to see even though she is not going out to Mr Samuel’s house.

9 The cable was drawn like a pencil line across the sun. The description of the cable drawn across the sun suggests that there is only one cable connecting the town of Cocao Bottom to modernity and new technology and that is Mr Samuel.

10-17 The fireflies waited in the shadows,their lanterns off.The kling-klings swooped in from the hills,Congregating in the orange trees.A breeze coming home from sea held its breath;bamboo lining the dirt road stopped its swaying,and evening came as soft as chiffon curtains;Closing. Closing

The last half of the frst stanza that even the natural world of Cocoa Bottom is waiting for this new technology. The pace of this poem now slows down creating tension. Like the children of Cocoa Bottom, we as readers, are also holding our breaths, waiting for the electricity of Mr Samuel .The personification of the breeze and of nightfall demonstrates how exciting and new electricity is in Cocoa such that we assume the wealthiest man in town has.

18-24 Light!Mr Samuel smiling on the verandah –a silhouette against the yellow shimmer behind him –and there arising such a gasp,such a fluttering of wings,tweet-a-whit,such a swaying, swaying.

The exclamation of “light” is representative as a flick of the switch. It’s magical. Mr Samuel is clearly pleased with himself, hence he is smiling on the verandah, as the master of eecterictiy, he is the master of people’s curiostiy. This picuter creates an air of majesty. The sudden burst of life again is also representative of the sudden flick of switch. With the magic of electrcity, Mr Samuel has effectively created a reason for everyone to be excited including the natural world of Cocoa Bottom. The onomatepoetic image created here represents the element of excitement. The crowd is excited by seeing light by a flick of the switch.

25-34 Light! Marvelous light!And then the breeze rose up from above the trees,swelling and swelling into a windsuch that the long grass bent forwardstretching across the bank like so many bowed heads.And a voice in the wind whispered:Is there one among us to record this moment?But there was none –

no one

The second half of this poem suggests that this is perhaps the first time anyone has seen electricity in Cocoa Bottom. The image of the grass bending forward again gives us the idea that Mr Samuel is perhaps both the master of curiousity and the most wealthiest man in town since he is the only man in town with electricity. Here we also see a contrast between Mr Samuel and Granny Patterson. Mr Samuel represents that of modernity and technology. By bringing technology into Cocoa Bottom, he is in face modernizing it. However, Granny Patterson belongs to that of the older generation and is suspicious about anything that she does not understand. As readers, we dont know if she has any causes to be suspicious of this new technology but we know that everyone is dazzled by this new technology.

34-39 (except for a few warm rockshidden among mongoose ferns) even heard a sound.Already the children of Cocoa Bottomhad lit their lamps for the dark journey home,and it was too late –the moment had passed.

The last stanza however, suggests that once the novelty has passed, the children of Cocoa Bottom and along with them nature, stopped marveling at the magice of electrical light. The personification of the rocks suggest that even though the children are so fascinated there is no one else around to document their fascination. No one else except for the children marvel openly at electricity. However, we also see that electricity, in fact, doesn’t bring modernity into Cocoa Bottom. Because Mr Samuel is the only one with this technology, he does not help the rest of the town. So we see that the children of Cocoa Bottom light their old fashioned oil lamps for the journey home and the brief moment of wonder passed quickly.

[Whole poem] The poem is symbolic of the bridge betwee nteh old generation and new generation as represented by the oil lamps and electircity. Clearly we see that Mr Samuel represents modernity and Granny Patterson represents the older generation. The children of Cocoa Bottom is the bridge that connects

the two. While they marvel at electricity, they also know that its magic cannot help improve their lives because they do not have the means of purchasing this and so they marvel at the unknown but eventually return to the life that they have always known.

Prayer Before BirthLine Quote Explanation

[Title] Already we know that MacNeice is trying to say. The poem is about a unborn child who pleas to God (as noted by “Prayer” ) most likely for salvation or for hope or something positive. This, when repeated fhroughout the poem, is like an incantation. Original narrative perspective

1-3 I am not yet born; O hear me,Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.

The poem starts with a plea from the unknown child to protect him/her from nocturnal animals both real and imaginary to not come near him. The use of assonance in the first stanza gives an internal rhyme ot the poem. This is the beginning of a lot of imperatives, to make it sound like a demand.

4-7 I am not yet born, console me.I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, on black racks, rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

Note the repetitions of “I am not yet born”. This helps tie the poem together and continues to remind us that this is the prayer of a child who is not yet born. It is structured as an anaphora (a type of parallel structure) and a refrain. In the second stanza, unlike the nightmarish animals he imagines in the first stanza, the child pleas for protection against people with, with the help of deadly drugs and clever lies, will control him and with all of their rules and laws. The use of the alliteration in the last line of the stanza “black racks rack me/..’ gives a harsh quality to the poem and gives a sense of negativity and desperation. The imagery that MacNeice uses creates a sense of evil and despair.

8-11 I am not yet born; provide meWith water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.

Because he is weary of all the negativity and all the influence that man has over him, the unborn child asks to be around nature, which to him, man has not yet corrupted. The personification of nature in this stanza, gives nature qualities that are normally attributed to people to emphasize the disgust that the unborn child feels towards mankind and

gives all the good qualities to Mother Nature. We see that the unborn child wants nothing to do with mankind and instead craves the company of nature and prays for a clear conscience to show him the way on the path of life.

12-17 I am not yet born; forgive meFor the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak to me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, my life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.

We see that the third stanza that he wants a clear conscience to show him on the way path of life. This is because the unborn child knows of the evil he will do under the influence of man and asks to be forgiven beforehand and repetance. He knows that he will be influenced by mankind in that as he grows, he will become more and more like those he does not want to be in the company of.

18-24 I am not yet born; rehearse meIn the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.

Because the unborn child knows that he will be influenced by the evil in the world, he asks God to prepare for the different roles he must play in his life even when the world turns against to the extent that the children hate him and the beggar is indifferent to him. Note the nature imagery. MacNeice creates a paradox in this stanza in comparison with the previous one. The previous one portrayed nature as uncorrupted while in the fifth stanza, the “white waves” which should, in theory, be considered pure and untainted calls to the child to bring him to his downfall. This proves that nothing in the world can remain pure, even nature, for long.

25-27 I am not yet born; O hear me,Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.

This short stanza basically asks God to keep away people who are savages or those who think they are superior to God come near him.

28-37 I am not yet born; O fill meWith strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.

He then asks for the will power to stand against those who would destroy his individuality and uniqueness to make him a machine. He doesn’t want to be contorleed as if he was a small stone which the wind can blow wherever he likes or if he was the water which someone ends up spilling everywhere. These metaphorical comparisons emphasizes the absence of control the unborn child has on his life. The image of water spilling represents the loss of life.

38-39 Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. The poem ends with an ultimatum. The unborn pleas to be protected

Otherwise kill me. against such a thing and asks to be killed instead of being sent into such a world. The “stone” refers to lack of freedom. This last stanza doesn’t use the refrain.

[Whole poem] Prayer Before Birth is written as a potent monologue with cascading lines, each heavy with internal rhymes, assonance, and alitteration which drives the poem in an insistent, almost crazed pace. The images created are powerful and poignant. Right from the title to the harsh ending, the poem casts and almost evil light on mankind and the whole world. MacNeice takes on the persona of an unborn child, he takes so little of the world because he thinks that not even an unborn child remains unblemished by the cruelty. Instead to have an untainted view of the world, he must take on the persona of an unborn child, still safe in his mother’s womb . The poem is quite depressing and sad as it paints the world in such dark colors that no matter what the child does once he is born, he is still going to be affected. If the people can’t manipulate him with lies and drugs nor cage him within the tall walls of social refrain, making him do evil things that cause other people harm that he would have not otherwise have done; if he fights them and resistance of them dictating his life, he will be rejected by them and be a social outcast. People of all classes will turn his back on him and he will be left standing alone on the path of life. In a wider perspective, the unborn’s unwillingness to be controlled could be a desperate outcry against being categorized. Everyone is being classified, in class, religion, skin color or country. This is also a why of subtle manipulation that the world, as a whole, may exercise on an individual. Thus he wants nothing to do and instead craves the company of nature and asks God to provide him with all the things which arent found in the world anymore. Thei poem can be considered a protest agaisnt totalitarianism, a type of government system where public and private lives are dictated by the government, especially in the 7th stanza. The imagery of those who would dragoon him into lethal automaton immediately bring to mind those of a soldier, a person who is not allowed to show any emotion and is asked incessantly to kill on behlaf of his country can only be considered a thing without a face. This poem makes a sweeping statement ofn the

deplorable state of the world. Living is a painful experience and being born is a terrifying one. The child’s pleas is a representation of the peot’s grief and anguish of the world that has metamorphised into a living hell. He paints a picture of a world devoid of love and remorse thorugh the haunting appeal of the unborn infant. The poem reflects the peot’s utter dejection and hopelsseeness, experessing the thoughtss that the world will bnot correct itself but perpetuate its evil in an neverending spiral of perpetuance.

My Last Duchess FerraraExplanationThis poem is looslely based on historical events involve Alfonz the Duke of Ferrara who lived in the 16 th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem and tells us that he is eneternating an emissary who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage to the daughter of another family as he has recently been widowed. As he shows the visitor throughout the palace, he stops in front of a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke reminscing about the portrait sessions then about the Duchess herself. The musings give way to a diatride of her disgraceful behaviour.He claims that she flirted with everyone and didn’t appreciated his gift of a nine-hundred-year-old name. As his monologue continues, the readers have an evermore chilling certainty that the Duke caused the late Duchess’ death. As her behaviour escalated, he gave commands (then all smile stopped together) to have her killed. Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand, arranging for another marriage with another young girl. As the Duke and the emiisiary walk away the painting the Duke points out other notable paintings. The tone of this poem is chilling and rather terrifying. The Duke is a colorful character and this is made obvious by the structure and form of My Last Duchess which comprises of rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not have end-stops but rather they use enjambement for example, lines 1-2. Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of ending when it comes but rather reamain a subtle driving force behind the Duke’s compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite a performer, he mimics other voices and creates hypothetical situations and uses the force of his personality to make the horrifying situations seem merely colorful. Indeed the poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue. The speaker is clearly distinct from the poet. An audience is suggested but never appears in the poem and the revelation of the Duke’s character is the primary aim. But Browning has more than that to create a colorful character and placing them in a pictoresque historical scenery. Rather the specific historical of the poem harbors much significance. The Italian Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and his contemparies for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human alongside or in some time, in the place of the religious and the moral. Thus the temporal state allows Browning to explore the sex, the violence, and the aesthetic entangled complicating and confusing each other. The lushness of the language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished for her natural sexuality. The Duke’s ravings suggest that most of the supposed transgression tooks place in his mind. Like most of his fellow Victorians, Browning sees sin in every corner. The reason the speaker gives for killing the Duchess is that she is seen to have been overly sexual. However, she is nevertheless a victim a male’s desire to fix female sexuality. The desperate need to do this mirrors the effort of Victorian society to fix the sexuality of individuals. For people conforonted a more complex

and more complicated more modern world, this comes naturally in order counter and balance this. The resnaaisscane was time when powerful man such as the Duke excercised power. As such, it was fascinating time to study for the Victorians.Works like this imply that in such a time like that works produced like that of the Duchess’ might not be that entirely evil in its allocation of powers even though it put men like the Duke in power. A poem like My Last Duchess clacluatively engages its readers on a psychological level. Because we only hear the Duke’s musings we must piece together the story ourselve.s Broniwng forces the readers to be involved in the story in order to understand it. It also forces the readers to respond to the portrait in its method of portrayal. We are forced to consider which aspect of the poem dominates; the horror of the Duchess’ fate or the beauty of the language and the powerful dramatic development. Thus, by posing this question, the poem asks: does art have moral component or it is merely an aesthetic exercise?

Hide and SeekLine Quote Explanation1-2 Call out. Call loud: ‘I’m ready! Come and find me!’

The sacks in the toolshed smell like the seaside.The poem starts with a clever and confident child who has found a place to hide and is sure no one will be able to find him. One discvers it is a group of children playing hide and seek and the child is hiding in the sacks in the toolshed which has a permeating salty smell which reminds him of the seaside.

4-8 They’ll never find you in this salty dark,But be careful that your feet aren’t sticking out.Wiser not to risk another shout.The floor is cold. They’ll probably be searchingThe bushes near the swing. Whatever happensYou mustn’t sneeze when they come prowling in

In spite of the fact that the boy might be uncomfortable and afraid, he takes comfort in the fact that no one will be able to find him. The poet talks to the boy, giving him advice that he should curl up behind the sacks of sand and tells him not to shout in order to not draw attention to himself. Another difficulty presents itself in the form the cold floor but is quickly overrode by the fact that the other people will be searching in the bushes near the swing. The poet again advises the boy not to sneeze when they come searching for him in the toolshed. Note that although there is only one speaker in the poem, the subject and the speaker are entirely separate.

9-11 And here they are, whispering at the door;You’ve never heard them sound so hushed before.Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Stay dumb. Hide in your blindness.

The speaker hears the boys at the door of the toolshed and the thought of victory makes the boy seem quiet and subdued. Listening to the series of rapid commands, the boy freezes and shuts his eyes, hoping they won’t find him.

12-18 They’re moving closer, someone stumbles, mutters;Their words and laughter scuffle, and they’re gone.But don’t come out just yet; they’ll try the laneAnd then the greenhouse and back here again.

Sure enough, the voices move away, not believing that the boy would dare hide in the toolshed as it was probably considered off-limits to children . Even when the boys move away from the toolshed, the boy doesn’t come out, reveling that they will keep on searching for him all the while marveling

They must be thinking that you’re very clever,Getting more puzzled as they search all over.It seems a long time since they went away.

at his own cleverness.

19-22 Your legs are stiff, the cold bites through your coat;The dark damp smell of sand moves in your throat.It’s time to let them know that you’re the winner.Push off the sacks. Uncurl and stretch. That’s better!

A lot of time has passed since they have passed and the boy grows uncomfortable, stiff and suffocated. He then finally decides that it was finally time to reveal that he has won.

23-25 Out of the shed and call to them: ‘I’ve won!Here I am! Come and own up I’ve caught you!’The darkening garden watches. Nothing stirs.

To his dismay he finds the garden quiet. The series of personified phrases describes how empty the scene is. All the children have given up and gone home.

27 The bushes hold their breath; the sun is gone.Yes, here you are. But where are they who sought you?

The same voice of the poet who was helping the boy now turns on him, asking him what happened to his so-called friends who were supposed to find him.

[Whole poem] The poem is not just about a childhood game but also about life. The difficulties that the boy faces metaphorically represent the obstacles one deals with when one chooses to walk down the road in life. TBut the boy’s determination and will to succeed allow him to overcome these difficulties in life. Also, the other boys are the competitors that one has to deal with in life. They are describes as ‘prowling’, as if they are animals waiting to strike on their prey when they are unaware. Such are the problem life throws one’s way but if, like the little boy, one has a predetermined aim in mind, it is not difficult to pull through despite them. Then another message, that of making the maximum of any oppurtunites that life and luck bless one with. The boy could have enjoyed the glorious victory that he would have endured with the ample and terrifying time he had in the toolshed when had he declared his victory when the seekers decided to turn away from the toolshed. But he procrastinated, hoping that his delay will put him in awe of his competitors and in more glory as the victor, only to find out that his continued absence has made them lose interest and move on, leaving him alone and disappointed.

Poem at Thirty-NineLine Quote Explanation

[Title] Thrity nine is significant time for a woman. She reaches her prime and before she is enterng 40. This is especially hard if she is a single mother. Alice Walker had met a Jewish civil rights lawyer in 1965 and had her daughter Rebecca in 1967. They divorced in 1976. The speaker at this juncture at this stage when her daughter long for her father. This causes the speaker to long for her father.

1-5 How I miss my father.I wish he had not beenso tiredwhen I wasborn.

Walker begins the poem with a remiscing of her father in that she wished her father was not as tired when she was born.

6-19 Writing deposit slips and checksI think of him.He taught me how.This is the form,he must have said:the way it is done.I learned to seebits of paperas a wayto escapethe life he knewand even in high schoolhad a savingsaccount.

Her father taught her how to write checks and deposit slips and told her that this was the form. The speaker sees bits of paper were more to her than paper and it is the bits of paper compared to the life that her father has seen. This white-collar education was way to escape the life that she has seen with her father and even in high school she has a savings account.

20-26 He taught methat telling the truthdid not always meana beating;though many of my truthsmust have grieved himbefore the end.

Like George Washington’s father, he stressed the importance of truth and that telling the truth does not necessarily mean a beating. As a result, some of her truths which may have have been so selfish that she carelessly said, grieved him before the end.

27-33 How I miss my father!He cooked like a person

Now she misses her father greatly. She recalls her father cooking greatly and how he dances in the process. The lines may also imply that he is both

dancingin a yoga meditationand craved the voluptuoussharingof good food.

agile and contemplative in his actions. He craved the wholsome eating and sharing of good food. This is a pointer his magnamity.

34-40 Now I look and cook just like him:my brain light;tossing this and thatinto the pot;seasoning none of my lifethe same way twice; happy to feed40 whoever strays my way.

Now the speaker feels that she looks and cooks just like her father. Her brain is no longer sharp (My brain light) and routine has become a mechanical structure. She is caught in the cylce of actions (tossing this and that into) There is no seasoning in her life, no spices. Even happens spice in her life, she passes it off as monotonous. Now she finds pleasure in feeding whoever comes her way.

41-45 He would have grownto admirethe woman I’ve become:cooking, writing, chopping wood,staring into the fire.

Had her father been there, he would have admire her multi-tasking abilities as suited to a woman. Now she sits by the fire in a mediative stance.