Edexcel IGCSE Poetry Anthology Texts - War photographer - Carol Ann Duffy

Structure of Poem

- Four stanzas of six lines each (sestets)

- ABBCDD rhyme scheme

- Cyclical structure - beginning - in the darkroom setting his photos - end - off on another trip to take more photos - never ending cycle of his job

- The rigidity of the structure suggests constraint and formality, underlining the meaning of the poem

Themes of poem

- Consequences of war

- Emotional taxation

- Desensitisation to conflicts in other countries in the comfort of our own homes

War photographer [title]

- Duffy was inspired to write this poem by her friendship with a war photographer. She was especially intrigued by the peculiar

challenge faced by these people whose job requires them to record terrible, horrific events without being able to directly help their subjects.

"In his darkroom he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows" [stanza 1]

- Sinister start to the play

- (possibly a stretch but you could argue) The 'darkroom' is a metaphor for the photographer's depression. There seems to be an emphasis on this darkroom due to the anastrophe inverting the typical sentence structure

- Sibilance

- Ordered rows - Paints a picture of war graves being set out in rows in a graveyard - again, adds to the sinister effect of the play

- The spools (cylinders where old photographic film is coiled) obviously would contain horrific pictures of war victims - 'spools of suffering' - hypallage (when an adjective is put with a noun other than the one to which it refers) - metaphor for grief and pain

"The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a Mass " [stanza 1]

- Sinister, ominous atmophere set, due to the red light, and the assonance of the elongated 'oh' sound (glows, though, intone)

- Religious language used throughout + simile

- Duffy likens the photographer to a priest - while the priest shares the word of God and awareness of God, the photographer through his works spreads awareness of the horrible events that take place around the world and the suffering of others

"Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass." [stanza 1]

- Plosives, harsh sound - The names themselves are so well known that they are sufficient to represent the events that took place there - holophrasis

- This line changes the flow of the stanza, displaying the harshness

- 'All flesh is grass' - twisted religious scripture - brutal - people are being compared to the ground they step on - human lives are not that important and should be trodden over? We all die eventually and decay in the ground after all.

"He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands, which did not tremble then " [stanza 2]

- Short, monosyllabic sentence - cold approach to his job, harsh, desensitised

- 'slop' - lifeless, limp connotations

- Interesting how he is trembling now - before, he was able to detatch from his emotions and simply get the job done, but the horror of his job may have finally caught up to him

"though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel," [stanza 2]

- Caesuras enclose Rural England - is this his home?

- Use of the word 'again' - his job is a monotonous experience

- Contrast between the horrors he has seen in other countries, and his home in Rural England, which is a lot more normal and safer - more simplicity to life here

"to fields which don't explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat." [stanza 2]

- CONTEXT - refer to perhaps the most famous war photograph ever, of a young girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, her clothes burned off of her back.Associated Press Photographer Nick Ut captured the moment she was running away

- Contrast between safe England and places in conflict or dire situations

"Something is happening. A stranger's features

faintly start to twist before his eyes," [stanza 3]

- Simple declarative - ambiguous

- The photo is being formed - the photographer is transported back to the moment of taking the picture, bringing back the memory (though he doesn't know the people who he takes photos of - they are strangers - detatched + desensitised)

- alliteration of 'features faintly' adds to the soft, gradual process of this photo being developed

"a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man's wife, how he sought approval" [stanza 3]

- Double entendre - half formed ghost in the sense of the photo is still not fully developed - or a ghost in the sense that it is a photo of someone who has died, and by preparing this photo, he is essentially bringing that memory or even that dead person/ghost back to life

"without words to do what someone must

and how the blood stained into foreign dust." [stanza 3]

- Again, ambiguous...what must this person do? Murder?

- Explains how people's existences are fading away, forgotten, and gone like dust.

"A hundred agonies in black and white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday's supplement." [stanza 4]

- Contrast between the hundreds of photos and only five or six being revealed to the public

- In a way, it seems morally wrong and heartless to pick out from all of the horrific photos the most horrific to include onto a paper to give the reader of said newspaper the most heightened response

- Why do these brutal war photos only reach the supplement part of the newspaper and are not the main body of the newspaper? Do people not care about their fellow members in humanity across the globe who are suffering

" The reader's eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers" [stanza 4]

- The western world is just as desensitised as the photographer - they do not care about war problems across the world because it is not affecting their everyday life. Yes, they are slightly moved by it, but overall they have other things to worry about.

"From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns his living and they do not care." [stanza 4]

- assonance

- Photographer is numb to the significance of this task. We have a cyclical structure again - he is off going to do his next job in another country on a plane, after having just gotten home in Rural England - never ending cycle.

- Perhaps ironic how he 'earns' his living (by exploiting others who are not living) - taking photographs of the weak and vulnerable

- Who is they? - Ambiguous - Westerners?