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The first four lines of each stanza have a regular ‘abba’ rhyme to convey the consistency of the soldiers’ experience. The difficulties they are facing go on and on without change. However, some of the rhymes are half-rhymes, “knive us/ nervous”, “wire/ war” and “brambles/ rumbles”. This adds to the sense of unease. The men fear the effects of the weather and the constant threat of death. Language At a few points the language Armitage chooses also alludes to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this poem the speaker talks of his disturbed sleep, which links to Macbeth’s line that ‘Macbeth doth murder sleep’ after he has murdered the King. Furthermore, the poem finishes with the description of his ‘bloody hands’, which links the reader to Lady Macbeth’s madness following the murder. Lady Macbeth’s guilt drives her mad to the extent that she cannot wash the imaginary bloodstains from her hands. Imagery art and literature are where the true, lasting power lies – the statue itself and the words inscribed on it have long outlasted Ozymandias.
Throughout the poem Armitage uses colloquial language to make it seem as though the speaker is directly telling us his story. Phrases like, ‘On another occasion’, ‘legs it up the road’ and ‘end of story’ suggest the poem is in spoken English. ‘On another occasion’ also suggests the speaker has been through many similarly bad experiences. The phrase ‘probably armed, possibly not’ repeats to show how this guilt haunts him. There’s no set date to start revising. Your teacher probably said that you should have started last week, if not three months ago (as shown in the below video).Robert Browning was a Victorian writer who is famous for dramatic monologues in his poetry. He was very interested in European history and culture, which were the basis of much of his writing. My Last Duchess is based on a sixteenth century Italian Duke – Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara and his wife, the Duchess Lucrezia de Medici (who died at the age of 17). Content
The best place to revise is different for everyone. Some people like to revise in cafes while others prefer quieter places. Think about what the best environment is to help you focus. The most important thing when you revise is not to get distracted too often. Kamikazehas a fairly simple structure. There are seven stanzas, each with six lines. There is no rhyme and only a very basic rhythm. This simplicity means the reader focuses on the story itself and the tragedy of the events. The poem has only three sentences to give it the feeling of a story told orally. As we move between the sentences the speaker and time setting change as well. You need to think about what your interpretation is of why Garland has made these changes. Language and Imagery Ozymandias is a sonnet, but it is slightly unusual as it doesn’t have the same rhyme scheme or punctuation that most sonnets use. In Ozymandias there is often an irregular rhyme and punctuation splits some of the lines.The poem is written in iambic pentameter. Structure The poem contains lots of end rhyme (strong rhyme in the last word or syllable of lines or stanzas). This emphasises the key points and the switch between the two structures. Themes Blake describes a journey through London and describes the awful living conditions that the speaker sees across the city. At the start, the poem criticises the laws around ownership referring to the “charter’d Thames’ and the ‘charter’d street”. Here Blake refers to how the rich and powerful own everything in London. Blake goes on to criticise the church for not doing enough to help the poor. The final stanza discusses the horrors of prostitution and sexually transmitted disease. Form and Structure
The power of memory is linked to several of the other key themes, as is the related idea of loss. It can explore: In the first two lines Hughes repeats the word “raw”, “running-raw in raw-seamed hot khaki”. This immediately gives the reader a sense of the uncomfortable, harsh nature of the charge for the soldier, before we even begin to start thinking about the bullets and bombs coming from the enemy. Students will study one cluster of poems taken from the AQA poetry anthology, Poems Past and Present. There is a choice of three clusters, each containing 15 poems. The poems in each cluster are thematically linked and were written between 1789 and the present day. Storm on the Island is about exactly that. Heaney describes being in an isolated cottage on the cliffs of an island off the coast of Ireland while a terrible storm rages around him. Heaney describes the power of the weather and nature. He suggests that the people on the island can do nothing in the face of this natural power.The poem also has a metaphorical meaning. The storm and the disruption caused to the island could reflect the very human atrocities of the conflict in Ireland in the Twentieth Century. Form and Structure The Emigreetakes the form of a first person account, from a general perspective (there are no names given as discussed earlier). The poem is structured in three stanzas. The first two are eight lines in length and the final stanza is nine lines long. Why Rumens has added a line to the final stanza is open to interpretation, but it may be emphasising the lasting impression that this place has had on the speaker’s life.
Armitage creates a couple of vivid images to highlight the violence and gore of the soldiers experience and the extent to which he is haunted by the memory. The speaker talks of a ‘blood-shadow’ left on the ground where the dead man fell. At face value this simply describes the bloodstain left on the ground, but think beyond this and the ‘shadow’ becomes a metaphor for the memory of the looter and the shooting, which the speaker cannot shake off.Drink plenty of water to keep your brain working when you revise. Drinking water also helps to improve your concentration for revision. Finally the landscape is described further with the use of sibilance (the repetition of soft consonants – in this case an ‘s’). ‘Sun-stunned, sand-smothered land’ emphasises the alien environment for the soldier and the distance from which the event still haunts him. Themes
Conflict– there is a conflict raging in the speaker’s home city, from which she has fled. There is another conflict within the speaker between their current life of freedom and a longing for their childhood home.
When should I start revising for my GCSEs?
There is some powerful imagery in this poem. In stanza two Blake introduces the idea of “mind-forg’d manacles” (or handcuffs). With this Blake suggests that the structure of the society imprisons ordinary people’s minds. They can’t think freely and escape the terrible poverty they’re in.
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