Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Poems of the Decade - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Use of archaic language illustrates mystical realism, aspect of witchery, sense of confusion and uncertainty.
      - Sparse language perhaps out of reluctance due to guilt.
      - "fat as cream" sensuous simile, idea of prosperity yet aspect of negativity, possibility for violence?
      - Idea of the supernatural - possibility of unreliable narrator
      - "shut up" - blatant aggression, potentially foreshadowing brutal actions
      - Enjambed stanza - adds intrigue, idea of night as mysterious, perhaps supernatural.
    - - Enjambed "splash" - eerie nature, builds tension through split.
      - "grew lighter" - reflecting growing relief an freedom, yet temporary sensation, guilt and sin
      - "elf-shot" - condition in cows, a curse from elves causing pain - constrast to beginnings prosperity - loss of him, may reflect narrators loss and grief of hireling
      - Obsession for peace with intense guilt.
      - Ambiguity of sin - murder or homosexuality
      - End-stops demonstrate shift back to reality - taking a pause, potential for reflection.
    - - Association of wife and hireling could suggest homosexuality, idea of lust - idea of vulnerability, sense of comfort and reassurance vs disgust?
      - "torn voice" primal connotations, focus on grief and aggressive guilt, emotive language - reflection of peculiarity and apprehensive nature to emotion and pain demonstrating lack of understanding - perhaps reflecting societal understanding
      - Intentional ambiguity gives poem disturbing power, emphasising aspect of unreliability and mystical
      - "dark lantern" - oxymoron evokes sense that the unnatural and the natural are merging together - lack of clarity
      - Horns as a phallic symbol, further emphasising homo-erotic undertones, potentiality of infedility
    - - "yellow" - potential connotations of sickness, homosexuality as an illness. Idea of distortion, tainted nature of actions
      - Enjambent, demonstrating frantic, ongoing speech and lack of reflection
      - "moon" - feminine symbol - link of sexuality, idea of changing forms
      - Anaphora "his" emphasises story-telling nature, unreliability
      - Intimate nature of carrying, paired with delicate appreciation of his appearance - "lovely head", "top lip", "eyes", sensuous description.
      - "moon" also suggesting night and darkness, immorality
- - - - Lack of figurative language ensures realism - vivid and factual image - importance, crucial message
      - List emphasises tragedy of the unwanted - places significance on "girls" - deep rooted misogyny
      - Present tense reminds that issue is ongoing
      - Juxtaposition of female roles - respected sister vs disregarded "girls".
    - - Unappealing to society, disregard highlights vulnerability.
      - Lack of personalisation further dehumanises, not even induviduals
    - - "one of them" - lack of pronouns even when addressing individual, removal of significance and importance
      - idea of death - "ground", "bone" - perhaps question which future is better, death or abandonment
    - - Seperated, brings attention to individual, yet still not recognised "the one"
    - - Idea of moral obligation - "the parents"
      - Idea of travel "airport", contrast to Kerala, stuck, to ability to go anywhere - transition point
    - - Effects of trauma on sexuality?
    - - "empty" suggest lack of love and tenderness
      - Ambiguous "they" and "we" demonstrating the confusing process of adoption
    - - Detached, disconnect, dissociation from herself - "this girl" - potentially unwilling to accept herself or her reality - self discovery.
    - - Idea of legality, morality and secrecy
    - - Birth as a chore, job or duty, effort instead of celebration
      - Snake like, animalistic description
      - removal of of individuality within birth, idea of disconnection, detached, generalisation - lack of emotion
    - - womanly disregard of motherly roles - extensive societal control
      - Emphasis of male importance within society - ironic as process would be impossible without woman, yet they are discarded
      - reduced to anatomy - lack of emotions and induviduality
      - "heap" reminds of severity, mass loss
    - - Female obligation to men, lack of motherly obligation
      - Cyclical process "again" reminding the extent of suffering and loss all throughout the world.
      - Idea of a chore, or job "trudge" , yet willing participants - force or choice?
      - Diminishing stanzas may reflect diminishing role of woman, the fragmentation of women.
- - - - Repetition - emphasising idea of nothing developing within technological and societal development, reflected by lack of progress throughout the poem.
      - Juxtaposition of "countless" and "none" shows the frustration of the narrator in the meaningless, empty conversation - paradoxical.
      - Creates a sense of wariness and apprehension for the potential of this negative and frustrating future- robotic tone lends to paranoia and fear of the future and modernisation.
    - - "Great" - epithets, demonstrating limitation of automation in language, frustration, satirical, monotonous, repetition reinforces systematic approach
      - Repetition of "number" emphasises loss of individuality - also reminds that the robot is just numbers - binary
      - Satirical, ironic tone demonstrates failure of humanising a robot, monotonous
    - - Repetition creates a sense of meaninglessness, stuck in a loop - idea of futility
    - - Limitations of language - reflection of limitations of robots.
      - Repetition - building anger and frustration
    - - Wife just as robotic and monotone than the robot - impossibility of human connection and communication in the modern world
      - Wife's disappointment yet acceptance of reality - emphasised by contrast of emotions, "says" vs "shout"
    - - Technologies ability to turn manmade beauty - music - to meaningless and frustrating
      - Endless, frustrating cycle, passing of time, nothing changing even though everything changed
    - - Idea of conformity - he becomes robotic too - acceptance.
- - - - "ignore the void, or laughed it off" - putting up a front, lack of honesty but a coping mechanism instead, having to continue on as if there's no problem instilled into her now, she's handicapped and relies on the influence of close ones who become her "compass" of what wider society expect in modernity.
      - Idea of something missing, emptiness in herself as well as in reasoning, a "void" cannot be ignored making it an interesting concept, false hope, still wanting to remain youthful due to what people tell her, attempting to cease ageing defying an ongoing natural process. Maternal protection?
      - "saw things she couldn't see" - polyptoton providing epitome of pretence: she is adamantly lying demonstrating show it surrounds her thoughts.
      - "slow slide ... as blank as stone" - emphasises idea of a long but difficult decline, increasing a reader's empathy with the mother, simile emphasises her inability to see, general lack of figurative language and it is conversational reflecting the familiarity and inevitability of growing old.
    - - Idea of deterioration - from listing to admiring to sinking, yet list demonstrates determination to combat her disability. Disparity that blindness creates, saddening impact on induviduals, disorientating.
      - Volta of death
      - Reflective, yet strange lack of emotion, idea of acceptance and acknowledgment, removed her suffering, sense of relief, removes the burdens on both of them.
      - Change of season reinforces the idea of happiness and being surrounded by warmth, potential s :ymbolic of deterioration, botanically, autumn associated with leaves falling, idea of death - involvement of colour, shelter.
      - 'staring at nothing" - oxymoronic - hollowness and emptiness of disability.
    - - Direct address suggests frustration. "pitch black" - euphemism for blindness, finds it difficult to confront the reality of the situation due to its permanent nature. Cross stanza enjambment shows how lack of vision prevents direction and instigates ambiguities, difficult flow of the poem symbolically represents the mothers own daily difficulties.
      - "I'd bump myself off" - light hearted, euphemistic colloquial, hint of melancholy, dark humour echoed throughout, conversational but severe in connotations, idiom for the power of hope in a desperate situation
      - Trapped, reaffirming the pretence of interest, caesura which grammatically and metaphorically isolates "locked-in son". Triadic structure used to dramatic effect to foreshadow the saddening situation, burdened by his mother, difficulty to emote, remains "blind" to the truth which traps him emotionally, difficulty to comfort her.
      - "no built in compass" - humorous element reinforced again, old notion, adding honesty and personal resonance, could symbolise the lack of control we have over life
    - - Contrasts with her nothingness, surrounded by pointless beauty
      - Process of stages of death and grief, idea of finality
      - Even in death she is still subject to the comforting fiction, imagining the dead looking over the living. Line stands alone, emphasises tragic loneliness of death and departure of family.
      - "somewhere" grammatically isolated by caesura suggesting a vagueness, uncertainty even within death
    - - "bear being blind, to be honest" - plosive alliteration, reflects frustration in the state of helplessnesses. Conversational, ironic, lack of honesty and confrontation to blindness, suggestive that process of admittance is a burden, secretive? Colloquial tone allows readers to emphathise further
      - generalised understanding reflecting a lack of perception in reality, hiding blindness is impossible, as you have hidden from the world yourself. Should be stoical and not a burden, lack of understanding, narrow minded society, negative attitude. Intertwined nature of physical and mental health.
      - "like a Roman" - simile suggest metaphoric amour to withstand illness and burden - expectation of stoicism - idea of resistance and ignorance to injury or disability, putting up with affliction without complaint, self ignorance.
      - "find joy in the fight" - harder to discover elements of happiness with such a burden, abstract noun demonstrating how he only has an abstract understanding of blindness, permanence without explanation, positivity in harshest times, ongoing battle
      - Stark contrast between heroism and pity. Reference to enclosed spaces symbolic of mother being trapped by her disability. Caesura indicates reflective tone.
      - Adresses audience, encouraging involvement and empathy
- - - - Parallelism emphasises the distinct yet connected inheritance from each parent.