Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Poetry comparison - Loss and grief - the fallout of conflict - Coggle…
Poetry comparison - Loss and grief - the fallout of conflict
Poppies (Weir)
loss
"released a songbird from its cage"
saddness
"hoping to hear your playground voice"
struggle
"I was brave"
Kamikaze (Garland)
loss
"We too learned to be silent"
"Learned" is they primary explanation to manipulation. Propaganda, is a coercive fabricating process of which people in higher positions impose onto naive individuals; it originates from the opinions of people who have the wealth and the higher status that can afford to speak up and control millions by injecting a false truth which spreads like a virus across a population. When the father returned we can see through the focalised viewpoint of the daughter that she and her siblings still acted as if were their father but her mother's opinions impacted her views until she was taught to be silent.
saddness
"must have wondered which had been a better way to die"
By living he traded this for being forgotten and ignored. Story is not told by historians but by a daughter - who never knew him - the whole poem is speculative. Suggests the father physically survives but is dead to the community and society that he returned to
•tragic ending to poem
•last 2 lines are back to normal and not in italic - perhaps only italics parts are true
•"he must have wondered" - suggests daughter never spoke to father about his decision (sense of ambiguity)
•because memory was too painful for him
•"which had been the better way to die"
•he pondered whether the literal death as a kamikaze would be better than the emotional death he has experienced on his return
•treated as a ghost, like he truly is dead
•shows pilots choice to return was futile •it is like his decision to return home was a kamikaze mission in itself, it ended the pilot's life as he knew it
The oxymoron of 'better way to die' indicates how poorly the kamikaze soldier was treated after his return. The fact that he would have wondered if he should have died by killing himself through crashing a plane portrays how his 'family...friends...and neighbours' ostracised him for the rest of his life negatively impacted him, with a death of his respect.
struggle
"father's boat"
Form and Structure
•4 generations - mother talking to her children about her father (kamikaze pilot) and his father
•Sestet - 6 line stanzas - tight structure - overbearing and controlling expectations of society
•Contrasts to:
-free verse
-enjambment
-ambiguity
•suggests the conflict of the pilot's personal thoughts and his sense of national duty •reflected through contrasts between structural points