Tuesday 21st February 2012Learning Objective:

To be able to explain how language and structure contribute to writers’

presentation of ideas, themes and settings.

Must: C Should: B Could: AStarter: Read the sheet about the poet. Highlight any information that you think is important.What does she mean by

Analysis of the poem

Task 1:Each be given a different sheet

Read and summarise the informationYou must be able to discuss this

information with someone new to inform their analysis about:

BackgroundThemes

Poetic form

Group 1: Background• Group 2: Themes

Group 3: Poetic Form

Going to Market

To be able to

explain how

language and

structure

contribute to

writers’ presentation of

ideas, themes and

settings.

A ghazal is an ancient form of poetry which originated in the Middle East, particularly Persia

(modern Iran). Ghazals must be at least five stanzas long, with each stanza being made of a pair of lines, or couplet. The second line of each couplet

traditionally has a refrain, a pattern of rhyme or similar words. Traditionally, ghazals are about

unfulfilled love – the narrative voice loves someone else, but they either cannot or do not want to return

the love.

What themes are evident in the poem/become clearer now

you have this piece of information?

Key Themes 

theme of love and separation 

 suggestion of forbidden or impossible love

 

 written in praise of the beloved

 

 theme of unrequited love

 

 beloved’s power to enchant represented

in extended metaphors 

 beloved portrayed as beyond reach or

unattainable 

 explores sexual desire of lover

 

 spiritual elements within the relationship

 

 lover is presented as powerless to

resist her feelings 

 love expressed in erotic terms

 

• Return to the poem, and using different colours or annotations, find each of the following. Be prepared to share your ideas in class. You have just one minute for each!

• 1. Identify what you think is the most seductive line (where the speaker is trying to persuade the beloved to return her affections).

• 2. Select the most effective metaphor or extended metaphor to describe love in the poem.

• (A metaphor is a way of describing something by saying it is something else, eg ‘the sun is a furnace’. An extended metaphor is a metaphor that continues into the sentences that follow.)

• 3. Choose the stanza or sher you think best expresses the speaker’s love and feelings.

• 4. Which is the most sexually euphemistic line? (Euphemisms are indirect or suggestive ways to describe explicit or taboo topics, such as sex.)

• 5. Which do you think is either the most romantic, or the most sentimental or clichéd line? (Clichés are phrases that have a predictable and unoriginal quality because they are overused, eg ‘you mean the world to me…’.)

• 6. Find an example of idiomatic language. (Idioms are phrases with a figurative meaning, eg ‘It’s raining cats and dogs’.)

Soldiers Wounded SoldierWhat are your impressions of both images?

What is post-traumatic stress?

Draw the images to go with the quotations

Armitage wrote the poem about this

man: Eddie

A born soldier, Eddie expected to shoot and be shot at: that’s what he was trained for. Instead, he lifted the barrier at the checkpoint to wave through the death squads.

A couple of days later, he’d be a member of the party that went in to witness the horror and clean up the mess. There are things he won’t describe, he says, because they are so horrific. To try to cure his nerves and overcome his paranoid reaction to loud bangs, he once took a revolver out into a field and fired round after round of blanks against his head.

 … But, for me, the last word comes not from a man but from Laura, Eddie’s

wife. Tracing the scar of a bullet that took away part of her husband’s face, then continued pin-balling through his body, grazing his heart along the way, she describes the slow and sometimes painful process of trying to reach him, touch him, love him and make him human again.

The Manhunt

After the first phase,after passionate nights and intimate days,

only then would he let me tracethe frozen river which ran through his face,

only then would he let me explorethe blown hinge of his lower jaw,

and handle and holdthe damaged, porcelain collar-bone,

and mind and attendthe fractured rudder of shoulder-blade,

and finger and thumbthe parachute silk of his punctured lung.

Only then could I bind the strutsand climb the rungs of his broken ribs,

and feel the hurtof his grazed heart.

Skirting along,only then could I picture the scan,

the foetus of metal beneath his chestwhere the bullet had finally come to rest.

Then I widened the search,traced the scarring back to its source

to a sweating, unexploded mineburied deep in his mind, around which

every nerve in his body had tightened and closed.Then, and only then, did I come close.

http://anthology.aqa.org.uk/attachments/290.html

Chatter BoxChatterbox T H I N K

What is your overall impression of the poem?

Do you feel sympathy for the narrator? Why or why not?

Do you feel sympathy for the wounded soldier? Why or why not?

Do you think Armitage has managed to write effectively about the

situation? What does or does not work for you?

The Anthology has a section on ‘Conflict’ poetry; why isn’t this poem

included in there, instead of in the ‘Relationships’ section?

To be able to explain how language and structure contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings.

The Manhunt

Content:

What is it

about?

Language:

What types

are there?

Feelings and

Attitudes: What

are they?

Why

is it

calle

d

Manhu

nt?