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War photographer - Carol Anne Duffy - Coggle Diagram
War photographer - Carol Anne Duffy
Context
Poem was based off her friendship with a war photographer, and she wanted to explore the challenges and dangers they face - e.g in the Iraqi war 39 water photographers were killed from 2004-2009
Poem was published in 1985, 10 years after the vietmnam war, a contemporary reader would be aware of the picture referenced in the line “running children in a nightmare heat”
Famous photo of a girl in a nap napalm attack
an image of kim phuc with nick ut
After the picture was published, doctored from around the world offered to help her- its so lucky it was photographed because if not she would’ve died !
Napalm attack= Substance that can be used to create a bomb, results in burning to the human skin that gives all the way trough to the bone
Nick ut had two near death expericnes as a war photographer
Poet laureate from 2009
Language
Aysendtic listing “Belfast. Beeirut. Phenom phemn”. Aggressive sounds, and the pauses make the reader think on each event individually
Religious symbolism- like a priest , the war photographer has witnessed and been a hand to a great deal of suffering
Half rhyme between “the tears” and pre lunch beers” shows the horrific speed at which people return to their privileged lives without properly , unsatisfying
:
Even though in his darkroom alone, he cant find calm because of the horrors he has witnessed, “red and softly glows” blood; violent imagery, as well as reference to the stained glass in the reference to the church in stanza 1
Third person perspective makes the narrator seem alienated and isolated from mainstream society. Use of accusatory pronouns THEY
“Solutions slop in trays”- his photos act as a solution to the horror of war, trying to gain political change
“The readers eyeballs prick” eyeballs not EYES, prepays to show the mechanical action of this, diisgenuiene emotion
Accusatory tone “they do not care” invokes guilt in the reader
The paradoxical metaphor “Half formed ghost” preserves the memories of those who have died, or literally just the image developing
“Ordered rows”- graveyard
Newspaper=allegorical for the division between peacetime and wartime countries
Would compare well with…
Remains
Both narrators in a role of responsibility (photographer and soldier)
Both explore physical, phycologicsal and spiritual effects of war/conflict
Both stripped of control
Themes
Horrors of warfare
“Nightmare” “explode” brutal succession of conflict taken place,
The futility of war
Suffering
Impact on civilians
Structure and form
Tight, rigid form of 6 lines per stanza as well as a constant ABBCDD rhyme scheme , perhaps to reflect the normality and rigidness of rural england, in comparison to the chaos and terror that war stricken counttries face
Mirrors the meticulous way the photographer works (“ordered rows”). His sombre careful ritual is maybe his way fo having power/control over something in his life
Cyclical structure, that emphasises the thought that he feels as if he hasn’t changed anything “where he stairs out the aeroplane and they do not care” ends on a defeated note
The caesura of rural england, is unfitting and stands out to the rest of the structure, perhaps to illustrate the deattatchement of rural england from conflict around the world
