Power and Conflict Poetry

Context of “Kamikaze”

• Beatrice Garland wrote it to question rigid traditions that demand human sacrifice, exploring conflict between cultural pressure and natural human instinct

• Poem is about Japanese Kamikaze pilots, who flew suicide mission in WW2, returning alive with bring great shame to a pilots family and community

Kamikaze - Overview

• Critiques the destructive power of patriotism when it overrides human connection

Kamikaze - Speaker

• Third - person narration by the pilot’s daughter, creating a detached tone that contrasts the beautiful natural imagery with the stark reality of the pilots social isolation

“a shaven head full of powerful incantations”

• “shaven head” - Japanese military tradition, the pilot is bound by cultural expectations and honour

• “powerful incantations” - metaphorically under the spell of patriotism, has been brainwashed by propaganda, highlights conflict between state control and individual thought

“figure of eight”

• Symbol for infinity - eternal power of nature compared to the transience of humanity

• Life is brief and precious, war and honour will be forgotten but nature will remain

• Nature is more powerful than mankind

“shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun”

• Sibilance implies a sense of grace and peacefulness as well as suggesting an elegant and graceful tone

• Also works to increase the pace to make the poem sound more emotional

• Contrasts the violence he is flying towards

“nor did she meet his eyes”

• Eyes are windows to the soul - doesn’t want to see the person he has become - ashamed of her own husband

• Doesn’t want to communicate with him so distances herself as her daughter will - impact of conflict passed down through generations

• OR doesn’t want to face what she is doing - feels guilty - painful to give up her husband but the social expectations of her culture demand it

“which had been the better way to die”

• Both options only offer a kind of death - soldiers are controlled through propaganda and indoctrination and are just tools to the government

• “die” at the end offers one final bleak reflection on his fate

London - Context

• Written in the Industrial Revolution by William Blake, a Romantic Poet

• He lived and worked in London, saw it as corrupted by greed and inequality

• Protests against the monarchy, the Church (Christian but saw it as corrupt and hypocritical) and the government

London - Overview

• It’s a protest poem where Blake criticises the social inequality and corruption caused by the Industrial Revolution and powerful institutions, arguing they have oppressed and psychologically imprisoned the city’s inhabitants

London - Structure

• Cyclical structure - first, second and fourth stanzas focus on the impact on people, suffering is never ending

• Quatrains - fixed structure enhances sense of complete control and oppression

“I wander thro’ each chartered street, near where the chartered Thames does flow”

• Repetition of “chartered” - owned, mapped or legally controlled, applying it to the “street” and the natural “Thames” suggest human power has imposed artificial control over everything, removing natural freedom

• Owned and controlled by the wealthy

“Marks of weakness, marks of woe”

• Repetition of “marks” - the misery leaves marks on the people, implying their suffering is permanent and inescapable, like a brand

“The mind-forged manacles I hear”

• Metaphor - oppression is both external (from institutions) and internal (psychological), people are trapped by a lack of hope, their thoughts are controlled and restricted by an oppressive society

“Runs in blood down Palace walls”

• Metaphor of blood on “Palace walls” - graphic imagery directly blames the monarchy for the deaths of soldiers in foreign wars, suggesting the institution is build on a protected by the lives of the powerless

“And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse”

• Oxymoron of “Marriage hearse” - ends the poem with a vision of a completely broken society, combining connotations of joy and happiness with the finality of death and grief - love and family are destroyed by societal corruption

• Semantic field of disease - “blights”, “plagues” suggests society’s corruption is like a disease that infects and ruins everything, even love and new life

Remains - Context

• Written in 2008 following interviews with soldiers from the Iraq war

• Focuses on the psychological trauma (PTSD) of soldiers returning home

• Modern warfare

Remains - Overview

• Protest against the overlooked human cost of conflict, showing mental scars are permanent

• Raise awareness of PTSD

Remains - Title

• Soldiers remain damaged beyond repair after war

• Graphic connotations

• Physical remains of the looter

• War strips a person of their individuality and sensitivity to death, simply leaving them with the remains of a body

“On another occasion, we get sent out”

• Opens in medias res - confusion of the reader mirrors confusion of the soldier who isn’t emotionally prepared for what will come next

• Armitage could be commenting on how soldiers are launched into situations they don’t fully understand

• “another occasion” - one of many, this isn’t an exceptional case it’s what soldiers have to deal with daily

• “we get sent out” - following orders, tries to remove blame - hints at later guilt

“tosses his guts back into his body”

• “tosses” - connotes lack of care and respect

• Body is treated like and object

• Also suggests this is an action they’re used to - conflict causes the devaluation of human life

• Because they have been exposed to so much violence and death they have become desensitised to it - lost they’re respect for life

“probably armed, possibly not”

• Slight chance he was innocent and not a threat

• “probably” first as its what he want to believe as it provides justification

• Anaphora of the phrase later in the poem - shows how the possibility of the killing being unjustified haunts him

“he’s here in my head when I close my eyes”

• The warzone is no longer real but it is in his head - PTSD

• Internal conflict due to guilt - battle between whether killing was justified or not

• Memory of the looter continues to haunt him - mental illness and PTSD

“his bloody life in my bloody hands”

• Pun as the the word could be describing the violent, gruesome nature of his death or as a light hearted complaint

• “hands” symbolise guilt, he feels the blood is forever on his hands

• Last line of the poem - he will never be able to escape his guilt or memories

Bayonet Charge - Context

• Hughes’ father fought in WW1 and was emotionally traumatised

• Highlight the brutality of trench warfare as a tribute to his father’s suffering

Bayonet Charge - Overview

• Soldier abandons all thoughts of patriotic ideals and becomes driven by terror and survival instinct

• Strips away the “glory” of was and shows the reality of combat

• Questions blind patriotism and the futility of war

Bayonet Charge - Structure

• Chaotic, uneven structure with enjambment and caesura alongside brutal imagery to immerse the reader in the soldiers panic and confusion

“Suddenly he awoke and was running - raw, In raw seamed hot khaki”

• Opens in medias res - plunges reader directly into the soldier’s disorientation and shock

• “raw” - repetition creates sense of desperation, has animalistic connotation - lack of humanity in this situation

• “raw” - could also be emphasising the soldiers youth and inexperience - lack of preparation for this brutal reality

“Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame”

• Violent connotations of “Threw up” contrast innocence connoted by a hare

• War destroys innocent nature as well as humanity

“King, honour, human dignity, etcetera Dropped like luxuries”

• Asyndetic list of patriotic reasons to go to war

• “etcetera” - mocking tone - criticises patriotic values soldiers were supposed to unquestioningly embody

• “Dropped like luxuries” - simile convey how patriotic ideal are meaningless in a life or death struggle

“His terror’s touchy dynamite”

• The soldier has become a killing machine, his “terror” drives him towards the enemy, fear is his weapon

• Soldier has been completely dehumanised, transformed from a thinking person into a volatile, instinct driven weapon