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Eavan Boland - Coggle Diagram
Eavan Boland
Child of Our Time
Themes
- war and the death of innocents in conflict, political and societal apathy in the face of violence, a new discourse for peace.
Key images
- the imagery of childhood, the imagery of violence, the idle talk and new language, the robbed cradle, sleep as death.
Stylistic features
- juxtaposition, rhyme and rhythm of a lullaby.
Tone
anger, sorrow, resolution.
The Famine Road
Themes
- people’s inhumanity, cruelty, lack of empathy. Voicelessness of the oppressed and marginalised in society.
Key images
- the famine road, both literally and metaphorically in terms of the woman’s body. The simile of cannibalism. The simile of the snowflakes, the typhoid pariah.
Stylistic features
- use of direct voice of the British imperialists and the doctor, the direct voice of the woman at the end.
Tone
- matter-of-fact, dismissive, condescending.
This Moment
Theme
- celebration of the ordinary moments that make up a life.
Key images
- the neighbourhood, stars and moths, apples, colours black and yellow, the woman catching the child.
Stylistic features
- repetition, the use of the present tense, simile, stillness juxtaposed with movement.
Tone
- celebratory, meditative, grateful.
Love
Theme
marginalisation, erasure or absence of women as agents throughout history or in art.
Key images
light and darkness, the metaphor of the stars, the landscape of humanity and the accompanying mortality, myth versus history, kneeling beside the dead.
Stylistic features
metaphor, assonance, sibilance, repetition in the final stanza, negative language.
Tone
resigned, assertive, pessimistic.
The Pomegranate
Theme
- mother daughter relationships, the transience of parenthood and the desire to protect children, awakening sexuality.
Key images
- the Pomegranate, the three narratives – Boland as a child, Boland as mother to a young daughter, her teenager on the cusp of adulthood.
Stylistic features
- Metaphor the Ceres and Persephone myth as Boland and her daughter, rhetorical questions, juxtaposition of the modern and the mythical.
Tone
- desperation, love, resignation.
Boland says, ‘Poetry begins where language starts in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.’