The Emigrée ⭐

context

- travelled from country-country, reflected in writing

- relationship bet identity & culture

message

- lamenting the discrimination they experience in their new country

- sad truth of tyranny

- she presents maternal emotions towards it

opening 'there was once a county'

- establishes a fantastical tone to = the fact that the place described is a memory rather than a reality = how the place the speaker rememebers is romanticised by the idealism of youth & was never as perfect as the way it is depicted

- unreliability of the memory also depicted through use of ellipsis = 'pauses'

- contrast bet english 'the' and french 'emigrée' = establishes idea of 2 conflicting cultures & identities

structure

repetition

- rep of 'they' = aggressive & accusatory tone = city seem threatening & hostile = the racism aggression aimed at her from the citizens of her new city ('accuse me of being dark'): experiencing a new threat which is no longer physical but social rejection - does not belong

BUT can't return to homeland leaving her in a precarious pos where she experiences no 'sunlight' = issue of political conflicts

Last stanza:

- a descrip of the narrator's new city?

- enjamb in 'through the city// of walls' to sep 'of walls' from the rest of text. = reader to see walls as an isolated idea, creating connotations of entrapment.

- uses caesura & free verse = sense of chaos, which could conversely be interpreted as indicative of freedom

form

- free verse w no rhyme/rhythm = the chaos & lack of control over a country w no stable gov. This int juxtas w the pos imagery in the poem so the form could more likely be presenting freedom.

use of epistrophe (rep use of word at end of stanza)

- every stanza ends w a ref to sunlight: R juxtas the + conns of 'sunlight' w the - conns of 'branded' in 'but i am branded by the impression of sunlight' = how her love for her country will always overrule any feelings of pain caused by it

- gustatory imagery 'it tastes of sunlight' = delight in the memory

- juxta of light & dark '“my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight”

use of ep = that no matter what she hears in the news, the speaker will always have a + view of her city.

subjunctive case when ref to the negative attributes of her city

'it may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants' = how these flaws seem hypothetical to her as she does not have a new perspective of her city besides what she gained before she left as a child

Contrastingly, neg traits of new city & her feelings of fear stated definitively. These flaws = to be more tangible in “they mutter death”, “city of walls” and “they accuse me”. This shows her certainty of the flaws of her new city but this is likely because she no longer has the naivety of childhood altering her perspective

acts as an extended metaphor for a lost childhood

= multifaceted impact of conflict on the innocent, shatters innocence

- As well as narrator being depicted to have naïve childlike tendencies, her relationship with her former city is also shown to be maternal.

- metaphor “I comb its hair and love its shining eyes” implies that she acts like a mother to the city in the way through her unconditional love & protective tendencies. This impression is reinforced by “my city hides behind me” which implies that she is attempting to defend it from the criticism of the outside world