Name
Sixth Year English Study Strategy
2016
General Marking Scheme:
Strategy:
For all questions, remember to think before you write and that planning/structuring is never a waste
of time. Stay aware of diction and grammar/syntax. Try to vary your vocabulary and sentence
structures. For Paper I, they must be appropriate to register. Also, where choice is involved, take
the time to choose carefully. Especially in Paper I, you have the time to read and consider the
options. Of course, you don’t want to freeze in a decision panic. If you do, just calm down and pick
one. You probably are able for all options!
Paper I: 200 marks/170 minutes
Texts always have a linking theme which is stated on the cover. Past themes: Irishness,
different worlds, travel, war, homes, ‘play’, Irish identity, ‘ghost’-writing… You can expect some
kind of social issue, perhaps refugees, multiculturalism, racism/sectarianism, consumerism, ‘the
future,’ youth/age, violence, family etc… to be the link. Read all three texts; usually one is at least
partly made up of photos. Be aware of the marking scheme as you write: you must impress the
marker with more than content (as it is given). Think of your sentence structure, vocabulary and
grammar before and after writing each sentence. 'Engage with the text' which usually means being
positive and enthusiastic, but do not be afraid to display a sense of humor.
Part I: Comprehending
****Remember that A and B must be from different texts.****
Question A is very much text based: make sure you stick to it and refer to it and don’t drift off into
a purely Question B type “self-generated” response unless it is requested.
Language Styles
When possible, especially answering Comprehension A questions, refer to the Language Style when
analyzing the text. For example: ‘The writer effectively combines informative and aesthetic
language as he explains the plight of the refugees with evocative portraits of the people involved’.
4.1 The Language of Information
Students should encounter a range of texts composed for the dominant purpose of communicating
information, eg. reports, records, memos, bulletins, abstracts, media accounts, documentary films.
4.2 The Language of Argument
Students should encounter a range of texts with an argumentative function. The range of texts should
encompass material which offer models of both deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning as
used in journalistic, philosophical, scientific and legal contexts.
4.3 The Language of Persuasion
Students should encounter a range of texts which have a persuasive function, eg. political speeches,
advertising in all media, satiric texts, some forms of journalism.
4.4 The Language of Narration
Students should encounter a wide range of texts which have predominately a narrative function. This
should involve students in encountering narratives of all kinds, eg. short stories, novels, drama texts,
autobiographies, biographies, travel-books and films.
4.5 The Aesthetic Use of Language
Students should encounter a wide range of texts in a variety of literary genres for personal recreation
and aesthetic pleasure. This would include engaging with fiction, drama, essay, poetry and film in an
imaginative, responsive and critical manner.
Question A is divided into two or three questions, usually along the lines of:
Examples from 2011, Text 1:
1) ‘content comprehension’: consolidate, regurgitate, paraphrase, embed-quote to prove you
understand the content but also have the savvy to put things in your own way.
Lara Marlowe clearly thinks cat lovers are a breed apart. She makes several references to the
endless patience, no actual delight, with which cat lovers tolerate their ‘pets’’ idiosyncracies. She
proudly refers to Baudelaire’s devotion to his cat’s digestive process.
2) ‘techniques/assessment of style/qualitative judgment of writer’: Be aware of technique and
literary devices. Usually, positive is easier but do not be afraid to make a negative critique, along as
you back it up!
Marlowe’s mix of irony and honest enthusiasm, coupled with her name-dropping
references/allusions, makes for an interesting and humorous read. Her references to Pinot, Sivtal
and Vivaldi accurately and hilariously detail the cats’ ‘devotion, intelligence and independence,’ and
they remind me of the high-jinks of my own cat.
Humour, similes/metaphors (figurative language)
3) ‘personal response to piece’: sometimes personal response is required but make sure you refer to
the text specifically but not exhaustively.
Remember to proportion your time and effort according to the division of marks:
10 marks/minutes = half page
15 marks/minutes = three quarters to one page
20 marks/minutes = one to one and a half pages
B is more creative, but again make sure you follow the directions, and adequately show that you
understand the form (genre: speech, diary, article, dialogue, memo, proposal...), register (formal,
informal) and style (informative, argumentative, narrative, aesthetic, and persuasive) in which you
are writing. Connections with the text need not be laborious and limiting, but do try to use creative
modelling. (50 marks: 45 min: 2 pages)
Question B is a Short Writing Assignment.
For example, students have a choice between writing a problem page Letter of advice, writing a
Speech for a Local Community Association meeting, and writing three short Diary entries.
Remember:
Plan your point
Decide on a suitable form or layout
Think about your Register – using language that is appropriate for the task.
For example, the language used in a problem page Letter (informal, casual, humorous, friendly, etc.)
is different to the language used in a Speech (formal, organised, logical, well-informed)
• Make links to the texts if possible and appropriate
•
•
•
•
Paper I: Part II: Composing
Remember that you must show an awareness of the register, form and style in which you are
writing. Take your time to plan, especially structure. Too many essays, especially narratives/stories
start well but end abruptly or peter out. Be creative but purposeful. The link with the suggested
Composing text will vary with each option, but this is certainly your composition. Be creative,
original, daring etc… but follow the directions! Pick one of seven titles. There is usually a
story/narrative
e, a speech/debate, an article and a straight old-fashioned personal essay amongst them. (100 marks:
80 min.: 5-6 pages)
You have a choice of seven titles. The titles range over the five language styles.
The titles are linked in some way to the three texts. You may refer to the text to which the
composition is linked or you may complete the composition assignment with reference to your own
store of
knowledge or experience. You are free to refer to, quote from, or draw ideas from any or all of the
texts and their accompanying illustrations. This is known as creative modelling and is very much
encouraged.
When composing there are three elements to consider:
1. The purpose of the task.
2. The audience for whom you are writing.
3. The register appropriate to the task.
You should be conscious of the relationship between the audience, context and style.
Remember – while all categories interact and feed into each other, you must be clear about the
workings of each genre and know which genre you are writing in when you select your composition
assignment.
Choosing a Title
Use a process of elimination._ Know what genre you are writing in:_ Write about what you know.
Plan your essay
Brainstorm - write the title in the centre of the page and jot down all relevant ideas.
Select the order of your paragraphs.
Remember – You may decide to omit some of your original ideas.
Popular Compositions
The Personal Essay
· Draw on your own experience.
· Points made in an indirect way through the narrative.
· Be reflective, reveal your personality.
· First-person narration.
· Clear, logical structure or sequence of events.
· Draw pictures with imagery and detail.
· Comment on past events from your present standpoint, perhaps using a flashback structure.
Short Stories
· A short story is a limited piece of fiction. Focus on a little corner of life.
· It is a story, which involves some plot, happening or progression of some sort. This will usually
mean some tension or conflict and a resolution of that conflict.
· Reveal your characters through description, dialogue and actions. Go for a little depth and
difference. Make your characters credible.
· Setting – feel it, see it, smell it.
· Relevant to the title – don’t wander off and then try to force it round at the very end.
· Beware of over-long introductions.
The Discussion/Argument Essay
· Express your views and opinions on a particular subject.
· This is analytical writing – points are made and arguments areconstructed.
· Logical structure.
· Use examples and references to convince the reader.
· Use description, anecdote, etc. - keep it interesting.Choose a genre that suits you and get going!
The students who do best in the composition are often rewriting bits and pieces of their own work.
Examples and Structure Worksheet:
1. “…a living classroom…” (TEXT 1)
Write an article (serious and/or light-hearted) for a school magazine about your
experience of education over the last number of years.
Brainstorm:
bullying
boredom learning between the lessons teachers
practical
TY
Intro:
Par 2:
Par 3:
Par 4:
Par 5:
Par 6:
Par 7:
Par. 8:
Par. 9:Conclusion:
First Year impressions
cutbacks uniforms
2011 LC HL
1. “There are people and possessions I could live without. But a cat is indispensable.”(TEXT 1)
You have been asked to speak to your class about what you think is indispensable in
your life. Write the text of the talk you would give.
2. “I don’t discriminate…” (TEXT 1)
Write an article for a serious newspaper or magazine on the twin issues of
discrimination and tolerance.
3. “…the waiting had been magical…” (TEXT 2)
Write a story to be included in a collection of modern fairytales.
4. “…a thin girl…flips the key-guard of her phone and scrolls her texts.” (TEXT 3)
Write an article for a popular magazine in which you outline your views about the impact of
technology on the lives of young people.
5. “My favourite T-shirt…” (TEXT 1)
Write a personal essay about your clothes, what they mean to you and what they say
about you.
6. “…the dust and seep of the city…” (TEXT 3)
Write a descriptive essay about twenty-four hours in the life of a town or city.
7. “The man above remained rigid, and yet his mystery was mobile.”
Structure of an essay
“My favourite T-shirt…” (TEXT 1)
Write a personal essay about your clothes, what they mean to you and what they say
about you.
BRAINSTORMING - Clothes:
Uniform, pyjamas, going out clothes, panties, old trusty sweatshirt and sweat pants
- What they mean to you:
Mean a lot but perhaps sometimes they don’t mean as much as I think they mean….
- What they say about you:
They probably say more about me than I think, but maybe they don’t say what I want them to say.
STRUCTURE –
- Intro:
Clothes of course mean a lot, but they don’t always mean what we want them to mean. LIST DIFF
TYPES OF CLOTHES, TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY MEAN, TEMPERAL STURCTURE
- Body 1
MAKE A COMMENT ABOUT PJ’s, recently in Dublin they have been seen in more places than
the bedroom.
- Body 2:
If it’s a weekend I get to wear what I want, but if its Monday or Friday I have to wear uniform. But
think about all the great uniform wearers of history, Nazi’s, Mao.
- Body 3:
Finally its Friday and I get to choose what I wear, but I wear all the same thing as my friends, I am
always wearing a uniform no one ever sees the real me.
- Body 4:
When I look at the photos of my childhood, I associate memories, and people with clothes. I
associate my …
Paper II:
I. Single Text: King Lear (60 marks/60 minutes/5 pages)
II. Comparative Study (70 marks/70 minutes/5-6 pages)
Concentrate on some ‘key moments’: Opening, development, climax/closing scenes are best.
Keep comparing and contrasting, even if it affects your fluency.
Do one of two questions in one of two of three modes!
3x3x3= 3 texts studied and written about comparatively under 3 modes, concentrating on at least 3
key moments!
You do 1 of 2 questions out of 2 modes. (1 of 4)
Suggested Structure of each paragraph
STATEMENT ALL 3 TEXTS (or 2)
STATEMENT TEXT 1 & KEY MOMENT
LINKING PHRASE & STATEMENT TEXT 2 & KEY MOMENT
LINKING PHRASE & STATEMENT TEXT 3 & KEY MOMENT
STATEMENT ALL 3 & PERSONAL RESPONSE TO QUESTION
I. Literary Genre
Genre,’ in the original or ‘macro’ sense, refers to the category or type which a work of art is
classified. It works on several levels, like Venn diagrams and/or Russian dolls: Genres or art:
painting, sculpture, cinema, literature, music… Genres of Painting: portraiture, landscape,
abstract…. Genres of Literature: poetry, drama, novel… Genres of Drama: tragedy, comedy, social
realism… Genres of Tragedy: Elizabethan, Classical Greek, Postmodern…
According to the department of E&S, ‘genre’… has both a wider and narrower sense…wider in
the sense that it means to them ‘how the author tells the story’; narrower, in that something as
specific as ‘the use of camera angles in Citizen Kane to convey perspective’ is considered a genric
comment or aspect. For each work, consider how the story is brought to life or conveyed by the
author:
Basically, ‘how the author tells the story’: narration, character creation, point-of-view, plot,
suspense, specific film ‘genric’ techniques such as camera angles and ‘types of shots’, diagetic/nondiagetic music/sounds…
Past Questions:
2015
1. “Studying a selection of texts helps to highlight how some authors can make more skilful use of
the same literary technique than others.”
Choose one literary technique, common to three texts on your comparative course, and compare how
skilful the different authors are in using this literary technique in these texts. Support your answer by
reference to the texts. (70)
OR
2. “Compelling storytelling can be achieved in a variety of ways.”
(a) Identify two literary techniques found in one text you have studied.
Discuss the extent to which these techniques contributed to compelling storytelling in this text. (30)
(b) Identify one literary technique, common to two other texts on your comparative course.
Compare the extent to which this literary technique contributed to compelling storytelling in these
texts. You may select one of the literary techniques identified in 2. (a) above or you may choose to
use any other literary technique in your answer. (40)
2012 1. “Authors make use of a variety of techniques to shape memorable characters.” Identify and
compare the techniques used to shape one or more memorable characters in at least two texts you
have encountered on your comparative course. (70)
OR
2. (a) With reference to one text on your comparative course, discuss the author’s use of setting (or
settings) as an effective feature of good story telling. (30)
(b) With reference to two other texts on your comparative course, compare how the authors use
settings as an effective feature of good story telling. (40)
2010:“Aspects of narrative contribute to your response to a text.”
(a) With reference to one of your chosen texts, identify at least two aspects of narrative and discuss
how those aspects contributed to your response to that text. (30)
(b) With reference to two other texts compare how aspects of narrative contributed to your response
to these texts. In answer to question (b) you may use the aspects of narrative discussed in (a) above
or any other aspects of narrative. (40)
2008:“The creation of memorable characters is part of the art of good story-telling.” Write an essay
comparing the ways in which memorable characters were created and contributed to your enjoyment
of the stories in the texts you have studied for your comparative course. It will be sufficient to refer
to the creation of one character from each of your chosen texts. (70)
2005: Write a talk to be given to Leaving Certificate students in which you explain the term Literary
Genre and show them how to compare the telling of stories in at least two texts from the
comparative course. (70)
2005: “Powerful images and incidents are features of all good story-telling.”
(a) Show how this statement applies to one of the texts on your comparative course. (30)
(b) Compare the way in which powerful images and incidents are features of the story-telling in two
other texts on your comparative course. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the
texts.(40)
Sample Genre Paragraph
G:
F. Scott . Fitzgerald uses the usual the generic tools of the novelist, such as
dialogue
and narration but does so skillfully and subtly . He builds compelling and believable characters
through a combination of Nick the Narrator’s sly narration and realistic dialogue .
None of the characters are particularly likeable but the certainly are vividly drawn and it is
Fitzgerald’ s skill as a novelist that has made them some of the most memorable characters in
modern American literature .
The ebb and flow of the readers’ confidence in Nick’s Narration perfectly captures a sense of
Moral ambiguity about not only Nick but the characters he describes and sometimes despises,
We see everything through Nicks eyes but , After a while we learn enough to put some distance
between ourselves and his account . The character’s dialogue is obviously their own thoughts but
it is reported by Nick , so again we have to be aware of the refraction as it is filtered through him .
Sample Genre Essay Layout/Outline
Par. I: Briefly define genre, adjusting to question
(Adapt to question- here a speech) Fellow students, the JC is over, and gone too are the oldfashioned ways of looking at texts. Now we approach texts through ‘modes’ and today I will
explain how use the mode of ‘genre’.
(Define genre) The term ‘genre’ is used commonly describe the specific category to which a text or
any work of art belongs. ‘Genre’ in our Comparative Study takes on an added, more fluid
definition: it includes all the tools and methods which an author uses to tell his story. A story can be
told in many different ways: a character can be developed using a number of methods; a plot can be
advanced using various narrative tools.
Par.II/III: Describe the general genres of your texts and specify which aspects you will
analyse.
Every author needs to develop his plot and characters but he also needs to entertain as he does so.
My three authors manage to do both: All three tell riveting stories, with interesting but believable
characters and plots, as well as raising ‘serious’ issues for academic study. Rather than studying
them in isolation, the CS allows us to trace similarities and differences in their methods, using the
light generated by each text to illuminate the others, and thereby further accentuating their nuances
and subtleties.
CK is a 1948 epic, biopic directed and produced by the legendary Orson
Welles, which employs all the genric tools of the cinema to great effect, including camera shot and
tricks and variations in sound, music, lighting, set and costumes. GG is a classic modern American
novel which uses first person narration to chart the fall and rise of an American tycoon … And OT
is TW’s daringly composed American drama which stretches the genric tools of the stage in its
depiction of normal small town America.
All three texts create memorable characters and it is this common genric feature on which I
will concentrate, specifically the way the character creation and narration are employed using
different genric tools by the authors to make this journey both entertaining and meaningful. …we
learn that there are certainly different ways to tell a good story. In GG, character creation and
Plot/Suspense Development are through narration and dialogue. Narration is first person, in a sense
limited, but altered by the fact that the story is told in retrospect (hindsight is 20:20). Nick is
analytical and nuanced, and maybe not fully trustworthy. F. Scott . Fitzgerald uses the usual the
genric tools of the novelist, such as dialogue and narration but does so skillfully and subtly .
He builds compelling and believable characters through a combination of Nick the
Narrator’s sly narration and realistic dialogue . None of the characters are particularly
likeable but the certainly are vividly drawn and it is Fitzgerald’ s skill as a novelist that has
made them some of the most memorable characters in modern American literature . The
ebb and flow of the readers’ confidence in Nick’s Narration perfectly captures a sense of
Moral ambiguity about not only Nick but the characters he describes and sometimes
despises, We see everything through Nicks eyes but , After a while we learn enough to put
some distance between ourselves and his account . The character’s dialogue is obviously
their own thoughts but it is reported by Nick , so again we have to be aware of the refraction
as it is filtered through him .
CK, a film, employs the tools and methods derived from the genric armoury of the stage but greatly
altered and expanded. We obviously still have dialogue and action but the use of cameras for
narration and the multitude of characters and sets possible in a big budget movie brings it to a new
level. also through dialogue, but assisted by acting, voice modulation, costume….and camera shots
and special
Effects.. ie: deep focus shots emphasising Kane’s isolation.. Narration is also First Person for the
most part: seen through the camera through the memories of several characters…and the more
impartial newsreel..similar but different…
GG Dialogue is all filtered through Nick (naturally showing his bias). Nick/Fitzgerald provide
information about characters through the dialect and vocabulary and accent of each character.
CK Dialogue is spoken so subtleties of acting/delivery affect interpretation…
OT: The fact that Wilder employs a character/SM intentionally breaks the fourth wall and brings
even an added significance and emphasis of the tools of genre. The SM plays such a central, pivotal
role…
Plots of all three: The retrospective narration limits changes the suspense of the plot but also makes
it more subtle, we are sure of impending tragedy but not sure of the details.
Imagery: GG- Obviously through narration, which is at times naturalist “written as they are” but also
quite evocative. CK- The camera…
Par. IV/V: KM 1: Opening/Early Scene
The differences in genre between GG, CK and OT are especially evident in the opening and early
scenes of the respective works, as the authors try to establish their characters (and plotlines). GG
opens with Nick’s jaundiced, retrospective view of the whole ‘sorry affair’ of Gatsby. CK’s
opening scene(s) is a tour-de-force of innovative cinematic techniques which establishes the plot
through camera-work, dramatic soundtrack and some early cinematic special effects. In OT, genre
is also to the forefront, as the SM introduces himself, rather dramatically for a an audience used to
less daring theatrical techniques.
Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick, comes across as a trustworthy, knowing, normal, well-educated
young man - if a bit cynical. His mocking deconstruction of his family’s solid middle-class origins is
humorous but tells us that Nick’s got a shtick: class and its discontents. Nick’s character is allimportant: we view all the characters through him. In CK, the camera is our narrator, and its
opening, stark shot of a ‘No Trespassing’ sign which quickly segues into a dolly shot of a
Transylvania-like palace leaves the viewer no doubt that they are in the hands of an ambitious
director and cinematographer. The starkly gloomy soundtrack augments the camera’s movements
and when we finally zoom in cinemagically to see a snow-globe drop and hear a single word
dramatically uttered, we are hooked. Watching the opening of OT, we quickly become accustomed
to the daring subversion of traditional theatrical genric devices such as props, sound effects and
stage directions. The SM’s layout of the neighbouring Gibbs and Webbs houses seems a bit silly at
first: One might think we are watching a school play with a small budget and a great faith in the
audience’s imagination but we soon realise that this innovation is more intentional and quite
remarkable.
Fitzgerald maintains narrative suspense by having Nick hint at dark tidings but not actually
giving the details. We suspect a tragic outcome, but stick around to see when and where the bodies
fall. It is a subtle sense of suspense, far different from the opening shots of CK: the camera
dramatically shifts from mysterious glimpses of Kane’s lonely demise to the bombastic newsreel
coverage, with an attendant quickening of soundtrack music. More subtly, OT’s vague stage
machinery serves to accentuate and emphasise the characters and their dialogue. Paradoxically, the
play seems very real despite, or maybe because of, its honest admission of it just being a story told
on a stage. Welles went to great lengths to fool his viewers, and he did this to great special effect, as
the camera pans, dollies and somehow shoots through a snow-globe and Fitzgerald has fine-tuned
the traditional trope of first-person narration to new ambiguous depths (quote) , but Wilder is the
most adventurous yet also the most direct: a simple profundity emanates from a stage where
invisible tea kettles whistle and rows of chairs so eloquently suggest the ranks of tombstones and our
own mortality…
Par. V/VI: KM 2: Development Scene
As our texts, develop we get used to their respective methods of narration and character creation and
all three continue to push the parameters of their respective genres.
On the other hand, we see and hear different genric tools if we examine another key moment from
CK: the visit by the reporter to Thatcher’s memorial library. Here the camera takes over from Nick
the narrator: ity sweeps over the grand , cold colossal statue and empty spaces…Dialogue arrives:
modulations in tone and accent… librarian’s voice, costume…convey character..
The incredible flashback of Kane’s Colorado roots is a cinematic tour-de –force: the fades out and in
from snowglobe to childhood snow an dthen the use of deep-focus to establish the tensions between
the characters and, most poignantly, the background picture of young Charles playing blithely
outside the window in his doomed frozen Eden while his fate is sealed in the foreground..
OR: Susan Alexander’s state of obvious decline and slurred retrospect…
We can leave behind the brittle china and personalities of the Buchanans, and flee the debauched
cocktails of SA’s dive bar and take refuge in breakfast at the Gibbs and Webbs. Somehow, within a
few minutes, we feel part of the family…or we want to be!
Innovative stage design: two different sets at the same time…innovative mixture of dialogue
demands a lot from viewer but also conveys the oneness of this place…
Special effects: obvious/ironic-transparent: Dialogue, gestures convey character…playful but
warm…
SM takes an active role, explaining and developing characters and plot…
Description of Tom standing on the porch in his riding gear: all narration- ostensibly just
description but a lot of personality is implied, Tom is rich, powerful, arrogant. He’s fit and he knows
it. Tim’s gay and he knows it. Dialogue also backs this up. He’s rude and generous, an honest snob.
Daisy’s transcendant beauty is described by Nick but early on we realize she is like Fabrigée egg –
all glittery surface.
Clearly these characters as more complicated and their creation is different than those of CK.
Tom and Daisy are introduced in a much different fashion than Kane and his friends: Nick’s
pointed, interpretive, bitchy/petty narration paints an image in a different way. We appreciate
Nick’s subtle narration but also his subtle criticism and hypocrisy. Tom’s brutal selfishness in the
way he clumsily fields a phonecall from his lover and Daisy’s laughing but crying maintenance of
decorum while her marriage cracks and crumbles…
Welles accomplishes a similar development of character with his own genric tools: an amazing
montage of the Kanes at the breakfast table conveys the slow decline of a marriage. The camera
tracks their growing estrangement. There is little dialogue, but that is the point, Wilder’s lightly selfmocking stage tricks charmingly convey the strength of this characters and their relationships. Even
though the SM tells us a a lot through direct narration, Wilder also shows us show the simplest but
most telling dialogue and movements.
Let us not forget acting: Kane’s
mother’s determined stare of rebellion against her abusive husband speaks a thousand words as does
Mr. Webb’s lovingly delivered banter with Emily and her put-on girlish posh posturing…
Par.VII: KM 3: Development/Climax Scene
Myrtle’s party: We see Tom’s brutality and Nick’s rather compromised position
Gatsby’s party: We see Nick’s contradictions. Gatsby’s first apperance. Friendly, intentionally
enigmatic but almost as shallow as Daisy. Party, lewd, extravagant, (interestingly, Tom doesn’t like
these parties).
The trip to New York: This includes fraying relationship between Tom and Daisy and new
insight into Gatsby’s bizarre self-fashioning. The semi-hallucinatary narration of the Afternoon
captures the inebriated lifestyle of these people.
CK: In Susan Alexander’s apartment…
Or…. The political rally…
Camera angles: trunk shot, stairwell, special fx , sound/music, acting (stiffness) dialogue (‘I’m
CFK!)
Character creation: selfish CK, Innocence of SA; montage of apartment visits
Snowglobe…
OT: Ice cream parlour, SM is the proprietor (Mr. Morgan)! Dialogue reflects character and
setting…and a few simple props and very important stage directions (more effective because we, the
audience, share in their creation….contrasts with CK’#s camera trickery (no extras, even in crowd
scenes!)
Par. VIII: KM 4: Concluding/Resolution Scene
The respective genres of our works are especially evident in our climactic and concluding
scenes. In GG, the fatal crash itself, with some infamously lurid narrative description (‘flapping’)
and its aftermath, suffused with Nick’s bitter retrospect, prove Fitzgerald’s expertise as novelist.
The incendiary revelation of the arch-symbol ‘Rosebud’ needs not a word, well just one word, and
the commanding pull of the camera to direct the viewer’s attention and respect. OT goes out as it
came in: with the SM poignantly pointing out the profundity of the common-place.
Nick’s last glimpse of a living Jay Gatsby is particularly memorable as narration , dialogue
and symbol powerfully converge…
The burning sled speaks for itself but so do the impressive wide and high angle
shots of Kane’s immense store of valuable artefacts: Welles again pushing the tropes of cinema as
he ironically films photographers trying to photograph the scene…
Wilder somehow mixes innocence and hope with sadness and tragedy, providing lines which
ask all the right questions but deliver no easy answers, and the actors, freed from ornate stage
machinery but propped up by the essentials, carry us through into the gentle New Hampshire night.
II. CULTURAL CONTEXT
‘Cultural Context’ refers to the structures and values of the world within the texts. No character
lives in isolation. Like you or I, or any living person, a character is in part the product of the culture
around him or her. Depending on the particular text, this culture is both a creation of the author’s
and/or an interpretation of an historical one. Understanding the social, political and economic forces
of this culture, and their influence on the thoughts and actions of the characters, adds extra
significance to the study, especially when we examine a group of texts and their cultural contexts
comparatively.
Past Questions CULTURAL CONTEXT
2014
1. “Various social groups, both large and small, (such as family, friends, organisations or community) reflect
the cultural context in texts.” Compare the extent to which one or more social groups reflect the cultural context
in at least two texts on your comparative course. (70)
2. “The cultural context within a text often dictates the crises or difficulties faced by characters and their
responses to these difficulties.”
(a) Discuss to what extent this statement applies to at least one central character in one of the texts you have
studied for your comparative course. (30)
(b) Compare the extent to which the above statement is applicable to at least one central character in each of
two other texts you have studied on your comparative course. (40)
2013
1. “In any cultural context, deeply embedded values and attitudes can be difficult to change.”
Compare the extent to which the above statement is valid in relation to your understanding of the cultural
context of at least two texts on your comparative course. (70)
2. “The issue of social class is important in shaping our understanding of the cultural context of a text.”
(a) Discuss the importance of social class in shaping your understanding of the cultural context of one text that
you have studied as part of your comparative course. (30)
(b) Compare the importance of social class in shaping your understanding of the cultural context of two other
texts that you have studied as part of you comparative course. (40)
2011
1. “A reader can feel uncomfortable with the values and attitudes presented in texts.”
Compare the extent to which the values and attitudes that you encountered,
in at least two texts on your comparative course, made you feel uncomfortable. (70)
2. “The roles and status allocated to males or females can be central to
understanding the cultural context of a text.”
(a) Show how this statement might apply to one text on your comparative course. In your answer you may refer
to the roles and status allocated to either males or females, or both. (30)
(b) Compare how the roles and status allocated to males or females, or both, aided your understanding of the
cultural context in two other texts on your comparative course. (40)
2009
1. “The main characters in texts are often in conflict with the world or culture they inhabit.”
In the light of the above statement, compare how the main characters interact with the
cultural contexts of the texts you have studied for your comparative course. (70)
2. “Understanding the cultural context of a text allows you to see how values and attitudes
are shaped.”
(a) Show how this statement applies to one of the texts on your comparative course. (30)
(b) Compare the way in which values and attitudes are shaped in two other texts on
your comparative course. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the texts.(40)
2007
1. Imagine that you are a journalist sent to investigate the cultural context of the worlds of the three texts from
your comparative course.
(a) Write an article on the cultural context that you found most interesting. (30)
(b) In a second article compare the cultural contexts of the other two worlds with each other. (40)
2. “The cultural context can have a significant influence on the behaviour of the central character/characters in a
text.” Compare the way in which the behaviour of the central characters in at least two of your texts is
influenced by the cultural context of those texts. (70)
2006
1. “The cultural context of a narrative usually determines how the story will unfold.”
(a) Compare the way in which the cultural context influenced the storyline in two of the texts you have studied
in your comparative course. (40)
(b) Show how the cultural context influenced the storyline in a third text you have studied. (30)
2. “Understanding the cultural context of a text adds to our enjoyment of a good narrative.”
In the light of the above statement write an essay comparing the cultural contexts of the texts you have studied
in your comparative course. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the texts. (70)
Sample CC Outline
Par. I: Briefly define cc, adjusting to question (and targeting aspects, as in question or chosen
by you)
‘Cultural Context’ refers to the structures and values of the world within the texts. No character
lives in isolation. Like you or I, or any living person, a character is in part the product of the culture
around him or her. Depending on the particular text, this culture is both a creation of the author’s
and/or an interpretation of an historical one. Understanding the social, political and economic forces
of this culture, and their influence on the thoughts and actions of the characters, adds extra
significance to the study, especially when we examine a group of texts and their cultural contexts
comparatively. Focussing on gender roles/family/social class/both/AD/other… in our respective
cultures…
Par.II/III: Describe the general cultural contexts of your texts and how they represent the
aspects you will analyse.
General: All three of our texts present to us the cultural context of early to mid-2oth Century
America…
Aspects: The significance of social class looms large in all 3 of our texts’ cc.
In GG, we are dropped into the Roaring 20’s, and American style capitalism rules unrestrained: we
quickly realise that social class is the currency of this money mad culture. CK also conetrates on
social class and the perils of sudden mobility as CFK tries and fails to reverse the American Dream
and spit out his silver spoon and reacquire his poverty. AT first OT’s CC seems to be an idyllic
class-free American Disneyland, but we do learn that the Poles live across the river, the milkman
speaks a bit more commonly, and money matters, but there is a wholesomeness in its small town
market economy and politely co-operating classes.
Par. IV/V: KM 1: Opening/Early Scene
Par. V/VI: KM 2: Development Scene
Par.VII: KM 3: Development/Climax Scene
Par. VIII: KM 4: Concluding/Resolution Scene
Name
New CC WS
Q: i) Trace how the development of the characters’ attitudes and values in one of your texts is affected by their
cultural context. (30)
ii) Compare the way in which values and attitudes of the characters are shaped by cultural context in two
other texts on your comparative course. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the texts. (40)
i. I. Intro: No man is an island and no character is one either. In a well-crafted, realistic text the cc of a text
inevitably affects and even shapes the development of its characters and we should be able to trace this influence in
the attitudes and values expressed by them. The CC of GG is dominated by…
Roaring 1920’s America: mostly upper middle and upper class; but ash heaps- wc; Class/AD: Eggs-Monies,
American Dream and its discontents…
II. KM 1: Nick Intro and Lunch at Tom and Daisy
Nick’s attitudes and values are dominant in the text: his is the lens through which we view everything and his severe
case of jaundiced melancholy has a dominant influence on the focus, even distortion, with which we view the cc of all
the characters, including himself. Nick’s sardonic narration not only helps create the characters of Tom and Daisy,
but also fleshes out the intricacies of Nick as a character himself, and we learn that the cultural context of GG has a
great influence on all three. Nick’s own particular cultural context has clearly shaped his A and V: he seems to have
been raised in a wholesome Midwestern family with solid middle class values, thus instilling him an ambition for
financial and social success but also a reticence that seems lacking in some of the other characters.
Granddad accomplished the AD and he is on its coat-tails
Tom’s obscene wealth affords him a stronger claim to masculinity than Nick’s effeminizing middling class status.
Daisy endures Tom’s brazen affair and Jordan…
Child?
KM 2: Choice of 2 parties: Myrtle or Gatsby’s
G: Where East Egg condescends to meet West Egg… Classy, aloof Daisy vs. trashy, new money decadence…
M: Nick’s lament about the lonely stockbrokers /Tom condescends to entertain people much lower than him on the
social ladder… Myrtle is a wanna-be snob (‘kikes’ ‘thought he was a gentleman’)
Tom proudly orders Nick to accompany him on a ‘jolly’ to Manhattan, where he escapes the censure of the East
Egg world and can engage in some condescending ‘slumming’ with working class people, including his bodacious
girlfriend. We see the aspirational values and attitudes of the working class here, but we also see more clearly into
the brazen of Tom…
KM 3: Tom the Polo Player/ Lovely Shirts/ Trip to NYC/Accident
A and V of characters? ‘LS’: /…that her CC has emotionally infantilized her to the point where she can barely
express true feelings and she values only material goods…
KM 4: Aftermath of accident/Gatsby’s murder/ AD: Nick’s disillusionment ‘you are better…’
Gatsby’s Dad/Tom and Daisy in collusion/ Nick and Jordan?/epilogue…
ii. I. Intro:
The CC of CK is strikingly similar to GG as…while that of OT serves as an interesting contrast:…
The obsession with money/AD which dominates the other two only flits through the play like a powerless specter. In
both
texts, we see how the characters are grounded realistically in their CCs, and that their values and attitudes
are shaped by these dominant socio-economic forces…
CK: From dirt poor to multi-millionaire(s)…but ‘choked’..
OT: Early capitalist utopia, class and ethnic divides but benign? Bernie Saunders/ Eamon Dev.’s small-town
fantasy…
II. KM 1: CK filmstrip/boarding house and SM’s intro?
CK: From proletariat to capitalist without working his way up…important in a culture which values wealth above
all…bombastic tone contrasts with (OT) SM’s softly ironic description of GC’s CC…young people stay…CK
couldn’t, Gatsby didn’t….
A and V?
KM 2: Two contrasting breakfasts!
breakfast at families: OT’s Happy but realistic families, money is always talked about but not the only thing…
benign patriarchy… CK’s monatge of growing distance… fun at office?
A and V?
KM 3: Drugstore Courtship/Susan Alexander
KM 4: Tragedy in OT but acceptance-returning businessman/Bizarre Xanadu…accumulation
The CC of OT is realistic…No Disney…but… CK builds a Disney which becomes a distorted…
A and V of different characters: Bernstein?
Leland ?
Emily?
III. GENERAL VISION AND VIEWPOINT
What is the basic outlook on life as presented by the text? Is it optimistic or pessimistic? Cynical or hopeful? Both?
Both? Moral or political? Secular or religious? Reader’s reaction?
Questions may be tied to either ‘character’ or ‘reader’ which gives you more to write about: How does a character
reflect the GV of a text? How does a reader respond to/relate to/share the GV of a text?
Hints: Address the Q, introduce the idea of GV&V (briefly), then your texts – genre, name, author and mention the
major emotions you associate with each.
For general vision & viewpoint you might plan as follows but at all times focus on answering the Q:
What view is offered of humanity (are the main characters likable or deplorable?)
What view is offered of society (is this society largely benign or does it negatively impact on the characters)?
How does the text end & what vision are we left with (positive or negative) as a result?
Alternatively you could just take a beginning, middle, end approach but you must at all times focus on whether the
vision/feelings/atmosphere is positive or negative and how this impacts on the reader/viewers experience.
Past GV/VP Questions:
2014
1. (a) “The extent to which a reader can relate an aspect of a text to his or her experience of life, helps to shape an
understanding of the general vision and viewpoint of that text.”
Discuss this view in relation to your study of one text on your comparative course. (30)
(b) With reference to the text you referred to in 1. (a) above and at least one other text from your comparative
course, compare how two other aspects of the texts (excluding the aspect discussed in 1. (a) above) influenced your
understanding of the general vision and viewpoint of those texts. (40)
2. “Significant events in texts and the impact they have on readers often help to clarify the general vision and
viewpoint of those texts.” With reference to three texts on your comparative course, compare the ways in
which at least one significant event in each text, and its impact on you, helped to clarify the general vision and
viewpoint of these texts. (70)
2010
1. “The general vision and viewpoint of a text can be determined by the success or failure of a central character in
his/her efforts to achieve fulfilment.” In the light of the above statement, compare the general vision and viewpoint in
at least two texts you have studied in your comparative course. (70)
2. (a) How did you come to your understanding of the general vision and viewpoint in any one of the texts you read
as part of your comparative course? (30)
(b) Write a comparison between two other texts on your course in the light of your understanding of the general
vision and viewpoint in those texts. (40)
2007
1. “A reader’s understanding of the general vision and viewpoint is influenced by key moments in the text.”
(a) Choose a key moment from one of your chosen texts and show how it influenced your understanding of the
general vision and viewpoint. (30)
(b) With reference to two other chosen texts compare the way in which key moments influence your understanding of
the general vision and viewpoint of those texts. (40)
2. “ The general vision and viewpoint is shaped by the reader’s feeling of optimism or pessimism in reading the text.”
In the light of the above statement, compare the general vision and viewpoint in at least two texts you have studied
in your comparative course. (70)
2005
1. “Each text we read presents us with an outlook on life that may be bright or dark, or a combination of brightness
and darkness.” In the light of the above statement, compare the general vision and viewpoint in at least two texts you
have studied in your comparative course.(70)
2. (a) With reference to one of the texts you have studied in your comparative course, write a note on the general
vision and viewpoint in the text and on how it is communicated to the reader. (30)
(b) Compare the general vision and viewpoint in two other texts on your comparative course. Support the
comparisons you make by reference to the texts. (40)
Sample GV Essay Outline:
KM 1: Opening Scene
CK: From the opening, ominous, heavy notes of the organ, darkness, symbolic chain and sign… shifts dramatically
with the upbeat music of the newsreel. Within the reel, almost ridiculous shifts between light-hearted and heavy..
Scene ends with us realising it is a newsreel watched by reporters: General vision shifts: interest/suspense… How this
happened? GV is centred on how we respond to CK as a character and the other characters’ memories and opinions..
GG: Nick’s pessimistic knowing, sardonic, suggestive narration sets the vision of the text: we are to see things
through Nick’s jaundiced eyes. But Fitzgerald allows us some distance from Nick: perhaps Fitz’s visit is different:
Nick’s involvement is not that of an entrapped innocent…more a willing participant and the novel’s overall vision
darkens further… ‘Nick’s reference to Gatsby as an interesting but ultimately doomed enigma ( )spurs my interest
but also conveys a sense of foreboding…’
OT: Completely opposite to the jaundiced vision of Nick: SM is like your favourite uncle or older neighbour: His
viewpoint is one of wholesome realism and we the reader/viewer gets imbued with his plain, good sense.
Paperboy/Milkman/Kitchen: : vision of everyday, small-town life. Not a fantasty. SM’s vison is not purely rosecoloured glasses: inequality, war, bad luck… realistic mix of opt. and pes.: like life, our lives! SM: paperboy’s
youthful energy, milkman happily accepts his lowly but respected status (reader: whereas I wonder…) lack of props
universalises… positive reaction… mothers moan, complain… but happyish…
“When the SM refers to the death of Joe the paperboy (quote), the GV of the text does darken considerably as we
realise this is no Disney-type fantasy: the sometimes harsh vagaries of life will be realistically represented. This both
compares and contrasts with Nick’s narration in the opening of GG: there is a similar reference to impending tragedy,
but the vision is darker as there is a sense of Gatsby’s demise having been avoidable and therefore, more tragic.
KM 2: Development
CK: Segue through snow-globe to cabin: whiteness brightens our view… Child’s shouts of joy up the mood!
(But….rosebud…) Nature… Family: Mother’s love and sacrifice? Solemnising love of her son…
Breakfast at the Kanes’ ..during the montage of breakfast scenes where we see the Kanes’ relationship
deteriorating…conveys a darkening g.v. and this makes me as a reader feel…Leland: CFK and love: wants to be
loved but..
GG: Lunch at Daisy’s and Tom’s or the first meeting with Gatsby at the party. The pessimistic vision of a shallow
and false society is set in both: the beauty of the house, the lights, the people and especially Daisy’s voice and
Gatsby’s smile. Nick has already learned the truth about these people and his view tries to be enthusiastic but keeps
lapsing into disillusionment. Fitzgerald’s view is even darker, if Nick himself is in view.
OT: At the drugstore: Sweet, wholesome, endearing, innocent, yet practical…. (farm) makes me positive about
relationships.. Contrast with GG GV about relationships: fake ‘gosh shucks’ George…
But this positive gv is not matched by me… Emily…I believe that EG relationnship reflects a more positive gv than
C/S or T/D/M but I myself also notice the sexism…
moderates in the drugstore scene:
The GV
we have the highs of witnessing a wholesome relationship blossom before
our eyes (If you could…) and the innocence of it all contrasts markedly with the cold brittle façade of Tom and
Daisy’s marriage and reminds us a bit of the very early days of CK and SA’s affair, except that he is still married to
Emily. As a reader of these texts, you find yourself valuing an ice cream soda over the $300,000 necklace bought by
Tom.
Comparative Notes on Each Text
Name
Gatsby Quotes Ch 1
English 5
Comment, with reference to CC or Genre and, if possible CK
Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. Nick here states his open-mindedness as a person
and narrator, but there is some ambiguity here, similar ‘genrically’ to the biased flashbacks of CK.
When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a
sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into
the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my
reaction — Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.
Wordy,
impressionistic, ominous account of the moral situation regarding Gatsby- and his CC.
I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father.
Nick subtly refers to his Yale education and upper-middle class CC. Subtlety shows his selfconscious reticence.
to the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape
and size. West and East Egg are geographically identical but poles apart inn CC: new and old money
it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side,
spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool,
Genrically, this is typical novelistic narration and description of G’s mansion (CK: camera sweep)
CC: American Dream’s chaotic cannibalization of culture.
he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest
Tom is super-posh, but honestly?
to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I
expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, G: subjunctive, cynical, ambiguous
narration…CC: Their mansion is more authentic, but….is it?
, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
David P and other macho (CC-gender) big boys making their statement
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger
and more of a man than you are.” G: Nick’s pointed narration establishes Tom’s (CC) macho,
paternalistic persona (and his own jealousy?) CK: shot of Charles in his cool cockiness
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise — she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious
expression — then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came
forward into the room. Nick (G) subtly state the duplicity and ambiguity of Daisy’s character; (CCG) feminine wiles?
“I’m p-paralyzed with happiness.” She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held
my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so
much wanted to see.
Nick knows she is fake: but he still falls for it. G: Narration of
novel conveys subtleties of personality. CK: acting, voice, costume
(I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant
criticism that made it no less charming.) CC-Gender: flirtacious.. G: Nick’s ambiguity…
Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
CC: Children: in CK also, barely present…children themselves..
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively. This annoyed me. Nick’s rare, direct opinion.
Tom is direct, as always.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
CC: lookin’ down on nouveau West Egg G: Nick’s, as narrator, use of ‘contemptuously
significantly builds character
She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it?
I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
Silly, or needs to be?CC/G
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence
that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the
absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant
effort to entertain or to be entertained.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and ——” After an infinitesimal
hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again
CC: Tom’s unintellectual racism: A/D: threatened
CC/G: Daisy is smarter than she acts..
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning.
G/CC: the irony/falseness of the culture
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this
world, a beautiful little fool.”CC/Gender:
Poor little rich girl…
Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling
scorn. “Sophisticated — God, I’m sophisticated!”
ironic yoking together of contrasting
meanings which conveys the falseness and hollowness of the culture
I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long
ago.
G: Naughty Nick?
Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white ——”
Ironic? Only partially…
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich — nevertheless, I was confused
and a little disgusted as I drove away.
Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no
longer nourished his peremptory heart. Damning account of Tom. G: narration…CK: camera shot…
Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and
far away, that might have been the end of a dock
Genre: Symbol: Light= Old Money/American
Dream=sled
Name
Gatsby Quotes Ch 2
English 5
This is a valley of ashes
CC: Flushing Meadows: Far below even West Egg on social ladder; Genre: Symbolic?
CK: Xanadu
Genre: camera pans…novel describes…
His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table,
sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew.
It is not the having of a mistress… it is Tom’s
arrogance…
“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”
She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women
can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but
there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually
smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost…
The living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it, so that to
move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles.
I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened
has a dim, hazy cast over it…
Mrs. Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall.
His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible
All they think of is money CC: statement about the American Dream
Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.
I almost married a little kyke who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me…
CC: classless society? Anti-semetic?
“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said finally. “I thought he knew something about
breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”
CC: CK: ‘I’m no gentleman…”
(American Dream,
class conflict)
I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but … I was within and
without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.
“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m through with it. I’ve got to get another
one to-morrow. I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve got to get.”
The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time to
time groaning faintly.
Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.
. . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great
portfolio in his hands.
Name
Gatsby Quotes Ch 3
English 5
In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the
champagne and the stars Nick sets a beautiful scene: the quintessential Jazz age garden party, and
the ethereal wonder of it, are well captured (G).
The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is
alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and
enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.
Fitzgerald has Nick change tone slightly : the narration now is less ethereal and more realistic but
not necessarily pessimistic (V): just captures how parties really are: a flurry of human activity, at
first mostly bright and positive…casual innuendo does hint at a more sarcastic appraisal of the
scene..
I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually
been invited. Slightly cynical account of the nature of Gatsby’s parties: not exactly a gathering of
close friends. Typical of Nick’s narration which implies more than it says. In CK, camera shots
convey the same sense of irony or criticism. Picnic at Xanadu.
(G,V)
…leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.
Nick describes Jordan’s entrance: another of Nick/Fitz’z almost oxymoronic descriptive duo (G:
narration is subtle and tricky*)- captures perfectly the veneer of disinterest that Jordan and her kind
feel compelled to display…V: Nick and Fitz’s habitual cynicism
T/I: class again….
Relationships.. * only retrospectively cynical?
…two hundred and sixty-five dollars.
the randomness
One of the Bobsy twins at Gatsby’s party: representative of
of the guests… to mention the actual price is crass (cc-class (Myrtle);
G/Character Building: Gatsby is generous/tries hard to impress…
Instead of rambling, this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the
function of representing the staid nobility of the country-side — East Egg condescending to West
Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gaiety. (G) Nick’s negative/cynical narration,
but with a point: (T:C) America has no true upper class…..
Absolutely real — have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard.
Weird ‘owl’ guy is amazed by the contents of Gatsby’s library: shocked that they are real. Gatsby is
expected to be all façade, but he is a ‘good’ fake….
I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into
something significant, elemental, and profound.
It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to
believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you
hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished — and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.
Narrative critique of Gatsby (G)
class (CC)
constrained to assure her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a
florid and corpulent person in his middle years.
“Who is he?” I demanded.
And I like large parties. They’re so intimate.
Oxymoronic adjectives of narration convey the
schizophrenic nature of the party and the culture which it typifies. (G, CC)
who was now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who implored me
to join him, I went inside.
at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: “You promised!”
into his ear.
but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into formality as several people approached him
to say good-bye.
She yawned gracefully in my face
The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my
shoulder.
A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with
complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of
farewell
At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others —
poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant
dinner — young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
Wha’s matter?” he inquired calmly. “Did we run outa gas?”
A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before, and surviving the
laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the
windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on
the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.
On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they
absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs.
Nick the narrator here informs us that he was actually quite distanced from Gatsby’s events. Is it a
façade? Is Nick fully trustworthy?
I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department,
but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July
I let it blow quietly away.
Nick here refers to his own romantic life and doesn’t cover himself in glory. Is he a coward?
Or does he treat the Jersey girl differently than Jordan?
At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others —
poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant
dinner — young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. G: Nick
here gets all artistic and conveys well the rather ironic loneliness of the city dweller. T: The dark side
of the new modern urban metropolitan life.
The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something — most affectations conceal
something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning — and one day I found what it was.
Nick about Jordan: she’s hiding something but also reveals Nick’s essentially cynical outlook V.
It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply — I was
casually sorry, and then I forgot.
Here, G: Nick narrates with that typical jazz age insouciance: he talks flippantly about deep
philosophical/personal issues. V: Does he really mean it? Are we that fallen?
Love, Nick,” and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of
perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be
tactfully broken off before I was free.
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few
honest people that I have ever known.
Name
Gatsby Quotes Ch 4
English 5
On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress
returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.
G: Mock ‘traditional’ opening to Ch. 4:
‘mistress’ belies the ironic social commentary (CC)
Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once,…
and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, …and James B. (“Rot-Gut.”) Ferret…
or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess
themselves to be.
Confess? ‘stain’ of new money
He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so
peculiarly American — that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth
and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games
G: narration conveys Gatsby’s coolness but also a criticism of his culture
CK: well-composed shot conveys the same; accuracy of the satire would be less
So my first impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded and he
had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door.
G: ‘bitchy’/snarky description of the ‘fake’ GAtsby
He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford,” or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had
bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there
wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all.
Foreboding…
We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a
cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then the
valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage
pump with panting vitality as we went by.
The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild
promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.
“— So I took one look at him,” said Mr. Wolfsheim, shaking my hand earnestly, “and what do you think I
did?”
G: ethnicity/class from dialogue CC: Jewish, made money, New York
Mr. Wolfsheim, looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling…
Joke:
“Five, with Becker.” His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. “I understand you’re looking for a
business gonnegtion.”
G: accent and lack of education is conveyed in dialogue through spelling..
…forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy.
His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the room…
G:Oxymoron: something attractive/repulsive about the Jewish Wolfsheim
“He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?” “I’ve heard of it.”
Mispronunciation is significant…
But I knew I had discovered a man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour….
“Finest specimens of human molars,” he informed me.
CC: WOlfsheim is complementing Gatsby: dubious recommendation…
Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”
“They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man.” First clear evidence of moral duplicity:
CC: American Capitalism: Only guilty if you’re caught…
She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in
Louisville.
Daisy’s CC: Midwestern belle but still limited by gender…
He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach
Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.
CC: Big posh Tom’s wedding…
-she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.
Ouch… CC: double standard and snobbery…
You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that
everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all —
and yet there’s something in that voice of hers. . . G: voice is symbolic of her allure and fakeness
He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.
G: Pointed and meaningful, profound: Gatsby as Nick sees him…and us.
Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who
dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm…
Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark
cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan,
scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.
Name
I suspected that he meant my grass.
G: typical sardonic narration
Gatsby Quotes Ch 5
English 5
It happens to be a rather confidential sort of thing.”
I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life.
But, because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut
him off there.
“I’ve got my hands full,” I said. “I’m much obliged but I couldn’t take on any more work.”
“You wouldn’t have to do any business with Wolfsheim.” Evidently he thought that I was shying away from
the “gonnegtion.” CC: Nick is poorer than Gatsby but he is too ‘classy’ to ‘pimp’ Daisy…. But he will do it
free?
Also: anti-semitism
“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hollowly, “. . .old sport.”
CC/G/V: fake, hollow…
In Kane, we
The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment,
up and down, with my ear alone, before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue
paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glistening drops as I took it to help her from the car.
“Are you in love with me,” she said low in my ear, “or why did I have to come alone?”
G: metaphor/symbol: voice is a wild tonic…shallow beauty (character creation)
Kane: sled/Rosebud, snow
Then from the living-room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy’s voice on
a clear artificial note: “I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”
A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I went into the room.
Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect
ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece
clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but
graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair.
G: film? Awkwardness of Gatsby’s pose awkward: Nick’s sardonic/ironic narration…
“We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.
“Five years next November.”
The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer set us all back at least another minute.
A brewer had built it early in the “period.” craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he’d
agreed to pay five years’ taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs
thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a Family — he
went into an immediate decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the door.
Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
CC: American dream-capitalism’s
of the past and eventual heart-break
But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word
or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
“Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn’t seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was going
to shake hands.
“I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in the big panic — the panic of the war.”
I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he
answered, “That’s my affair,” before he realized that it wasn’t the appropriate reply.
“Oh, I’ve been in several things,” he corrected himself. “I was in the drug business and then I was in
the oil business. But I’m not in either one now.”
CC: dodgy business background: American?
G: Gatsby’s careful speech: actor/fit in
“People who do interesting things. Celebrated people.”
Gatsby here explains to Daisy and Nick about his guests: crystallizes his fascination with the
chattering classes of the Jazz age: celebrity but is there any substance?
CC:
class, Jazz age (fake, shallow), dreams/aspirations (American Dream), love/relationships/morality
G: dialogue building character, realistic- not a grammatical sentence.
V: critical of Gatsby’s
materialism but also pitying of his naivety and almost childlike arrogance…
through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration salons…
Gatsby’s mansion is posh but ridiculously mixed-up: a pastiche of different styles CC: Jazz age
wealth is meaningless, shallow
G: subtle, accurate narration V: satirical, cynical
“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because
I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.”
G/CC: I Daisy really this banal? Materialism…emotional infantilism
Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever.
Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost
touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count
of enchanted objects had diminished by one.
Nick is theorizing that Daisy can’t match Gatsby’s dream..
I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more
satisfactorily alone.
G: oxymoronic narration…CC: society?
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not
through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her,
beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time,
decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can
challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
G: esoteric, profound narration:
‘over-dreamed’
Perfect encapsulation of Gatsby’s inevitable disappointment ,
Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there
together.
Name
Gatsby Quotes Ch 6
English 5
His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never really
accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island,
sprang from his Platonic conception of himself
CC: Social Class :
Fancy / Over the top narration
He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young
virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in
his overwhelming self-absorbtion he took for granted.
But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted
him in his bed at night
Nick describes Gatsby’s youthful personality and ambitions, with reference to his sexual
ruthlessness.
CC: Social/American Dream: Gatsby is not satisfied with his social position and has ambitions
both socially and monetarily. Gender: Gatsby’s rapaciousness with women.
Genre: Nick’s narration builds character, here through flashback.
The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically
robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women
tried to separate him from his money.
CC: Nick narrates Cody’s dubious riches and the dubious women he attracted. (AD/G)
CK: CC: Kane inherits money from a similar tycoon (posthumous). Similarly, CK and GG both
critique the AMNerican dream and its financial system, especially moral affects.
— the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern
seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to Cody that
Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne
into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.
CC: Cody, not a model millionaire (vs. Horatio Algiers stories about American Dream)
“My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom. “Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him?”
CK: G: GG: done through narration…IN CK, we understand the culture through camera shots
Of opulent parties, excessive expenditure of CK, dialogue: Newspaper office ‘follies’ dancing
girls
By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me.
They meet all kinds of crazy fish.”
Tom complaining about Daisy and Gatsby!!!!
CC: The irony… (gender) G: Dialogue rules!! CK: Also, dialogue is delivered with irony intended!
Hypocrisy/arrogance: ‘I’m Charles Foster Kane!”
There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne,
the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading
harshness that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept
West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to
nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through
Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have
expended your own powers of adjustment.
They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling hundreds, Daisy’s voice was
playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
CC: Back at Gatsby’d party: Social snobbery… Daisy condescends…
“I’d a little rather not be the polo player,” said Tom pleasantly, “I’d rather look at all these
famous people in — in oblivion.”
At first We thought Tom modest , But as we read on we se a new side to Tom’s character ,
Also could be interpreted as arrogance , he does not need to try and impress people .
But the rest offended her — and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was
appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place.” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island
fishing village — appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too
obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw
something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
CC: Social Class V: pessimistic , cynical about the American dream
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
Gatsby displaying his juvenile naivety .
CK: I don’t want to grow up!!!
Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the
incarnation was complete.
Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of
something — an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time
ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb
man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made
no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.
In a similar way to R & J , Daisy is Gatsby’s god…
G: esoteric, invocative narration… artistic, self-consciously….attempting high art…
CK: some of the more elaborate camera angles/shots: through windows., reflections…
Name
Gatsby Quotes: Earlier and Ch. 7-9
English 5
3: Instead of rambling, this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the
staid nobility of the country-side — East Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic
gayety.
CC: Old money visits new money…
3: Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.
G:
Nick about Gatsby: first meeting : CC: Gatsby is a climber…
3: He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library
was liable to collapse.
Metaphor! Gatsby himself…
3: Most of the remaining women were having fights with men said to be their husbands.
Typical smart-assed narration
3: On the contrary, they were merely casual events….
3: Most affectations conceal something eventually…
Jordan is hiding something…
4: “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West — all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at
Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.”
Lies!
4: “After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe — Paris, Venice, Rome — collecting jewels, chiefly rubies,
hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long
ago.”
CK: Gatsby pretends…CK really did!
4: A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril.
After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.
CC: Anti-semitism
5: The Journal
Gatsby refers to Hearst’s paper! (CK)
5: That voice was a deathless song…
G: symbolic voice..
Ch. 7
“Some weather! hot! hot! hot! Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it . . . ?”
CC:
Queens talk!
“Holding down the receiver,” said Daisy cynically.
Daisy actually shows emotion!
“You know I love you,” she murmured. “You forget there’s a lady present,” said Jordan. Daisy looked around doubtfully.
“You kiss Nick too.” “What a low, vulgar girl!”
Too far!
“That’s because your mother wanted to show you off.” Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small, white neck. “You
dream, you. You absolute little dream.”
CC: a child? Important? Just conspicuous reproduction!
“I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to Gatsby, “but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a
garage.”
Old money!
His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he knew
a long time ago.
Tom shocked by Daisy doing what he has done…
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money — that was the
inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . high in a white palace the king’s daughter,
the golden girl. . . .
G: symbol of her voice!!!
You can buy anything at a drug-store nowadays.” A pause followed this apparently pointless remark.
“Oxford, New Mexico,” snorted Tom contemptuously, “or something like that.”
In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside a little, and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the
car.
“No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to laugh
sometimes.”— but there was no laughter in his eyes ——” to think that you didn’t know.”
“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now — isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob
helplessly. “I did love him once — but I loved you too.”
They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale — and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was
an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.
In a little while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face.
He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the
sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight — watching over nothing.
There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His
wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.
“All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that up?”
A pause. Then Tom’s voice, incredulous and insulting: “You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.”
I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I’d experienced before.
“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can
count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything
overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”
G: Dialogue reveals the paucity of Tom’s intellect CC:
Absolute hypocrisy…
“She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never
loved any one except me!”
True?
her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: “Do you know why we left Chicago?
I love you now — isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob helplessly. “I did love him once — but I loved you
too.”
“Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.”
He looked — and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden — as if he had “killed a man.” For a moment the se
of his face could be described in just that fantastic way.
Thirty — the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm,
thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to
age.
but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap,
and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked
a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.
Brutal description of Myrtle’s death: visceral
In a little while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face.
G: character building…he’s human!
He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered.
“I got to West Egg by a side road,” he went on, “and left the car in my garage. I don’t think anybody saw us, but of course I can’t be
sure.” I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong.
Daisy stepped on it. I tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emergency brake. Then she fell over into my lap and
I drove on.
and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have
said that they were conspiring together.
Portrait of a couple:
So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight — watching over nothing.
G:
Narration conveys that the dream is over
Ch.8
In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between.
He found her excitingly desirable.
CC: class/AD: Gatsby is in love with the upper class…
It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy — it increased her value in his eyes.
CC: G/class: Gatsby finds Daisy more alluring because of market forces: low supply, high demand, high value!
but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as
herself —
fake!!
Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many
clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set
the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes.
G: esoteric, extravagant narration about the CC AD
There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was flattered.
“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to
end.
CC: Gatsby is the hero!
G: Nick’s ambiguous narration…
I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t care.
He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose
is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts,
breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the
amorphous trees.
and the holocaust was complete
metaphoric: burnt offering…
Ch.9
Most of those reports were a nightmare — grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue…but Catherine, who might have said
anything, didn’t say a word.
CC: link with CK tabloid media
I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone.
Hero! ?
In fact, there’s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I’ll do my very best to get away.”
“Gatz is my name.”
“Did you start him in business?” I inquired. “Start him! I made him.”
I can’t do it — I can’t get mixed up in it,” he said.
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00
CC: Young Gatsby’s youthful ambition…
I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without
resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower.
CC/Morality/Decisions
That’s my Middle West — not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth,
and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the
snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway
house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this has been a story of the
West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in
common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
CC: East is corrupt…
I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen,
overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a
stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with
jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house — the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.
“You threw me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little
dizzy for a while.”
Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an
honest, straightforward person.
“Yes. You know what I think of you.”
I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and
confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their
money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had
made. . . .I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child.
G: Character creation: narration: Tom; retrospect
CC: our culture makes us who we are; influences our decisions
Culture and childhood/maturity?
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter
— to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
GF: Grand narration GV: melancholic, tragic
Significant Quotes: Our Town Act 1:1
1938
May 7th, 1901
Stage Manager
G: Not a normal stage manager! A character who intentionally makes transparent the fictions of theatre. Breaks
the ‘fourth’ wall. Props, sound effects, scene transitions: all done with a sense of irony…
Polish Town's across the tracks.
Over there is the Congregational Church; across the street's the Presbyterian. Methodist and Unitarian are over
there. Baptist is down in the holla' by the river. Catholic Church is over beyond the tracks.
Nice town, y'know what I mean?
Well, of course, it's none of my business but I think if a person starts out to be a teacher she ought to stay one.
Yes. Somep'n went wrong with the separator. Don't know what 'twas.
Pair of twins over to Mrs. Goruslawski's.
Is he sassy to you?
CC:Gender: Dr. Gibbs is questioning his wife about their son’s misbehaviour… old-fashioned
gender based family duties.
Every day I go to school dressed like a sick turkey.
CC: G: stereotypical feminine concerns about image…realistic?
Conrtrasts with feminine strereotypes from CK and G: they are less healthy stereotypes..
You know the rule's well as I do No books at table. As for me, I'd rather have my children healthy than bright.
CC: anti-intellectualism?
I'm both, Mama, You know I am. I'm the brightest girl in school for my age. I have a wonderful memory.
CC: G: Arrogance? But innocent…self-esteem
Mama, do you know what I love most in the world. Do you? Money.
CC: AD/Greed: Could be from G or CK! But it is a more innocent expression here…proper level
Of materialism… less toxic
Eat your breakfast.
CC: Good family life! Contrast w/ CK cold breakfast…
No, he said, it might make him discontented with Grover's Corners to go
traipsin' about Europe; better let well enough alone, he says.
CC: Dr. Gibbs is happy with his lot….CK
Now we're going to skip a few hours.
Genre: self-conscious, honest fast forward (transparency of narrative structure)
Well…I don't have to tell you that we're run here by a Board of Selectmen. All
males vote at the age of twenty-one. Women vote indirect. We're lower middle
class: sprinkling of professional men…ten per cent illiterate laborers.
Politically, we're eighty-six per cent Republicans; six per cent Democrats; four
per cent Socialists; rest, indifferent. Religiously, we're eighty-five per cent
Protestants; twelve per cent Catholics; rest, indifferent.
Nice synopsis of the CC, political, socio-economic…
Ninety per cent of 'em graduating from high school settle down right here to live…even when they've been away
to college.
CC: They like where they are! AD? Contrasts with Gatsby…
Well, ma'am, there ain't much; not in the sense you mean. Come to think of it, there's some girls that play the
piano at High School Commencement; but they ain't happy about it.
CC: culture? Simple, a bit apologetic but not really embarrassed.. contrasts with Kane’s ravenous
consumption of art (but little gigestion); Gatsby’s books!
Emily, walk simply. Who do you think you are today?
CC: Mother obviously not a social climber…
Why, can you?
Yeah. But, you see, I want to be a farmer, and my Uncle Luke says whenever I'm ready I can come over
and work on his farm and if I'm any good I can just gradually have it.
The action takes place in the fictional town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, just north of the Massachusetts
line, between 1901 and 1913 . However, one of the central characters—the stage manager—exists in the 1930'.
While describing the town and its characters and commenting on the action, he flashes back and forth between
the early part of the 20th Century and the 1930s.)Grover's Corners serves as a microcosm; it is the world
condensed into a small community with characters reflecting the hopes and dreams, the failures and successes, of
people everywhere.
Our Town Comparative Mode Prep:
CC/SS: Gen Def: 1) social, political, economic world… 2) the specific cc of the 3 (or 2 and 1)
3) aspects of CC: American Dream (class), Gender, cultural morality, relationships/family
KM:
1: CK: opening shots of Xanadu; newsreel emphasising rags to riches
1: GG: Nick’s origins and description of Gatsby, Tom, Daisy… dock/light
1: OT: Stage Manager and Prof: describing town (geology, socio..) ‘Nice town, y’know’
The opening scenes of each of our texts contain penetrating insights into the CC of their worlds,
especially regarding their takes on the class structure and their shared but divergent American Dreams.
* Everyone is a dreamer, and Americans in particular dream big, often about some ridiculous rags-to-riches
ambition. All three cultures depicted in our texts have dreamers, too, and they are particular;y American, but
they range in …
Name
Significant Quotes: Our Town: Act I: 2; II:1
I don't mean the answers, Emily, of course not . . . just some little hint...
CC/GV: morality-decisions A/D: cheating is bad|
G: metaphor?
Seriously, dear; not serious.
Emily, you make me tired. Now stop it. You're pretty enough for all normal purposes
CC/G: Dialogue conveys character…contrasts with the inherent hyperbole of CK and GG:
You leave loudness to the Methodists. You couldn't beat 'em, even if you wanted to.
In square yards of wallpaper.
CC: Gender:
and you run off and play baseball…like she's some hired girl we keep around the
house
but that we don't like very much. Well, I knew all I had to do was call your
attention to it. Here's a handkerchief, son. George, I've decided to raise your
spending money twenty-five cents a week. Not, of course, for chopping wood for
your mother, because that's a present you give her, but because you're getting
older and I imagine there are lots of things you must find to do with it
. CC: Family structure works…Daddy tough love…
AD: value is often monetary;
Now, Louella! We all know about Mr. Stimson, and we all know about the
troubles he's been through, and Dr. Ferguson knows too, and if Dr. Ferguson
keeps him on there in his job the only thing the rest of us can do is just not to notice it
.
CC/G: gossipy girls;
Well, believe me, Frank, there is something to gossip about.
Hmm! Simon Stimson far gone, was he?
Worst I've ever seen him.
They're all getting citified, that's the trouble with them. They haven't got nothing fit to burgle
and everybody knows it.
Dr. Gibbs here humorously refers to the Grover’s Corners residents who have started to lock their doors.
Genre: colloquial dialogue: Yankee diction: ‘citified’
CC: A/D: Gibbs does not want bright lights, big city: he is proudly small town, but also one of the better off: the
Other side of town are apparently poorer (subtle class divisions) GV: humorous, some serious points
Link: Small town folk like Gatsby can’t stand where they are from, though Nick changes his mind…
further: class conflict critique…
Rebecca, you don't know anything
George is discussing science with Rebecca.
G: Dialogue revealing characters: realistic, sparring but still respectful,
CC: Family/Relationships: a real, loving but warts-and-all family portrait
CK: no siblings at all! GG: Myrtle and sister, much, more negative,
so I looked the other way
Constable sees drunk Stimson but ignores it!
CC: AD/society: Everyone stares in GG!
Well, enjoy yourself, but don't let your mother catch you. Good night, Emily
It said: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New
Hampshire; United States of America. What's funny about that? But listen, it's not
finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western
Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God…that's
what it said on the envelope.
CC: nice joke but symbolic of the firmly fixed culture of Grover’s Corners
Act II
Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.
CC: relationships, positive but realistic, authentic…
G: husbands, wives, girlfriends..
both of those ladies cooked three meals a day—one of 'em for twenty years, the other
for forty—and no summer vacation. They brought up two children apiece, washed,
cleaned the
house,—and never a nervous breakdown. It's like what one of those Middle West
poets said: You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life.. ..
a vicious circle…
CC: Gender: separation of labour,
Back in '84 we had a player, Si, even George Gibbs couldn't touch him. Name of
Hank Todd. Went down to Maine and become a parson. Wonderful ball player.
CC: AD works! Community: nostalgic, heritage, history
contrasts G’ s pastiche culture (architecture)
Every now and then he says "I do" to the mirror, but it don't sound convincing to me
And how do you think I felt! (Pause) Frank, weddings are perfectly awful things.
Farces, that's what they are!
CC: Gender: Women are not perfectly happy, but they are coping, surviving more honest than
in GG, CK…
The relation of father and son is the darndest, awkwardest…
Well, mother and daughter's no picnic, let me tell you.
CC: Gender: Gibbs’ honesty about family and gender…
'Tain't natural to be lonesome.
G: dialect/accent, homespun wisdom
Well, you and I been conversing for twenty years now without any noticeable barren
spells.
Well, good weather, bad weather, 'tain't very choice, but I always find something to
say.
George, do as your mother tells you!
Name
Significant Quotes: Our Town: Act II:2; III:1
Millions have folla'd it, George, and you don't want to be the first to fly in the
face of custom.
Every man that's ever lived has felt that way about it, George; but it hasn't
been any use. It's the womenfolk who've built up weddings, my boy. For a while
now the women have it all their own. A man looks pretty small at a wedding,
George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder making sure that
the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
So I took the opposite of my father's advice and I've been happy ever since
George and Emily are going to show you now the conversation they had when they
first knew that...that...as the saying goes…that they were meant for one another. But
before they do it I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very
young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a
person sleep-walking. You're just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that,please?
I…I'm glad you said it, Emily. I never thought that such a thing was happening
to me. I guess it's hard for a fella not to have faults creep into his character.
I always expect a man to be perfect and I think he should be. Well, I feel it's the other way
round. That men aren't naturally good; but girls are.
Well, you might as well know right now that I'm not perfect. It's not as easy for a girl
to be perfect as a man, because we girls are more…more…nervous. Now I'm sorry I
said all that about you. I don't know what made me say it.
No, no, Emily. Have an ice-cream soda with me. Two strawberry ice-cream sodas, Mr.
Morgan.
Grover's Corners isn't a very important place when you think of all New Hampshire; but I
think it's a very nice town.
The day wouldn't come when I wouldn't want to know everything that's happening
here. I know that's true, Emily. I guess new people aren't any better than old ones.
I'll trust you ten years, George…not a day over.
Oh, I've got to say it: you know, there's something downright cruel about sending
our girls out into marriage this way. I hope some of her girl friends have told her a
thing or two.
I'm giving away my daughter, George. Do you think you can take care of her?
Mr. Webb, I want to…I want to try. Emily, I'm going to do my best. I love you,Emily. I need
you.
Act III
The lights dim to black as the Choir’s singing fades and eight ladder-back chairs are
placed in two openly spaced rows facing the audience. Once they are in place, the
actors enter and take their places. The front row contains an empty chair; then Mrs.
Gibbs and Simon Stimson. The second row contains Mrs. Soames and the third, Wally
Webb.
These are graves in the cemetery. The dead do not turn their heads or eyes … but they
sit in a quiet without stiffness. When they speak their tone is matter-of-fact, without
sentimentality and, above all, without lugubriousness.
You'd be surprised, though; on the whole, things don't change much around
here….This is certainly an important part of Grover's Corners.
We all know that something is eternal…everybody knows in their bones that
something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. There's
something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.
Simon.
We thought of you all the time. We wanted to show you the new barn and a great
long cement drinking fountain for the stock. We bought that out of the money you
left us.
Live people don't understand, do they?
Name
Significant Quotes: Our Town: Act III:2
Mother Gibbs, we have a Ford, too. Never gives any trouble. I don't drive, though.
Mother Gibbs, when does this feeling go away? Of being…one of them?
I never realized before how troubled and how . . . how in the dark live persons are.
Look at him. I loved him so. From morning till night, that's all they are…troubled.
Little cooler than it was. Yes, that rain's cooled it off a little.
And as you watch it, you see the thing that they, down there, never know. You see
the future. You know what's going to happen afterwards. When you've been here
longer you'll see that our life here is to forget all that and think only of what's ahead
and be ready for what's ahead.
Oh, that's the town I knew as a little girl. And, look, there's the old white fence that
used to be around our house. Oh, I'd forgotten that! Oh, I love it so! Are they inside?
I can't bear it. They're so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old?
Mama, I'm here. I'm grown up. I love you all. Everything. I can't look at everything
hard enough.
Good morning, Mama. Yes, your mother'll be coming downstairs in a minute to make
breakfast.
Oh, George! I'd forgotten that…
Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama. I
married George Gibbs, Mama. Wally's dead, too. Mama, his appendix burst on a
camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it—don't you remember?
But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy.
Let's look at one another.
I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. Emily breaks
down sobbing.
I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back…up the hill…to
my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize
life while they live it...every, every minute? To be always at the mercy of one self-centered
passion, or
another.
Now you know. That's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and
blindness.
Simon Stimson, that ain't the whole truth and you know it. Emily, look at that star. I forget
its name.
No, dear. They don't understand.
Shorty Hawkins, down at the depot, has just watched the Albany train go by. Hm…Eleven
o'clock in Grover's Corners…You get a good rest, too. Good night.
Essay Prep
Kane Background Notes
CK: Genre: Opening SEQUENCE 1: PROLOGUE + NEWSREEL I
Let the film roll until the newsreel announcer says “The Colorado Lode”
A deep brooding musical theme opens the soundtrack of Citizen Kane and sets an ominous tone. The
visual track fades in almost immediately as a No Trespassing sign appears attached to a heavy wire
fence. The camera begins to crane upwards, as if ignoring the notice and the barrier. As it climbs
higher the image of the wire fence dissolves to another, then to a metallic floral design that looks like
a gate and finally to a wrought iron design. The initial K can be seen in a circle as a huge palatial
structure fades into view on the top right of the screen.
The next dissolve shows a pair of monkeys sitting on a metal railing in the left foreground. Another
wrought iron gate can be seen in the right middleground. The huge building can, once again, be seen
through the murk in the background. (It will occupy the same place in the composition for all the
succeeding shots in this introductory montage of dissolves.) One large window appears to be lit up. A
pair of gondolas float on still water and the building can be seen in reflection in the top right of the
frame. A raised drawbridge increases the sense of the estate’s isolation by suggesting that the water is
actually a moat and echoes back to the opening No Trespassing sign. Next there is a shot of the tee for
the sixteenth hole of a, presumably private, golf course on the estate. We can also see a pair of ragged
flagsticks. The musical theme, the murk, the hazy mist and the series of images give the sense of a
rundown estate that may once have been exotic in the extreme. The next two dissolves bring us nearer
to the building, the emphasis all the time on the lit window. The music rises in intensity and suddenly
stops as the light, which has been the common element of all the recent images in this montage, goes
out. The camera has, as it were, disregarded the No Trespassing sign and the editing has brought us
gradually closer to the building that has been cut off from the world. This has introduced a major
theme in the film: the invasion of privacy.
When the music resumes the camera set-up has changed and we realise that this is the first interior
shot of the narrative. The musical theme has also changed. A figure lies stretched out on a bed in front
of the window, now lit from the outside. The lattice design on the window recalls the wire fence and
reinforces the notion of the invasion of privacy that is being carried out by the prying camera. Double
exposure presents a heavy snowfall over the image of the window and then a dissolve shows a cottage
covered in snow. As the snow continues to blow across the composition the camera pulls backs
quickly and we realise that what looked like a rustic scene is, in fact, the interior of a snowglobe that
rests in a man’s open, unsteady hand. The theme of appearance and reality is introduced here. There is
a cut to a big close-up of a man’s mouth and he speaks the word “Rosebud”. Then the snowglobe falls
from his hand and smashes at the foot of the bed. The falling snow has been the common feature of
the last five shots.
We have witnessed the demise of a man whose last breath was used to pronounce the word
“Rosebud”. We might take the scenes united by the falling snow as his last thoughts: thoughts that
went back to a rustic world and a small snow-covered cottage. That world has been shattered now.
The broken snowglobe lies at the foot of the bed. The tiny cottage rests on its side. Reflected in the
shattered glass we can see a nurse rushing in to tend to the man, whose open hand can be seen in the
upper middleground of the frame. In the background we can see the window that has drawn the
camera, and us, through the murky exterior to trespass on this most private of moments. (This deep
focus camerawork that presents foreground, middleground and background with equal clarity will
become a major stylistic feature of the film.) The nurse crosses the man’s arms over his chest and
covers his face with his bedclothes, a cinematic cliché for death. There is a reprise of the shot of the
body lying before the window which acts as a bracket to bookend the action of this scene. (This is a
feature of the director’s editing style that will be repeated many times as the film progresses.) The
music fades and then stops, giving finality to the scene.
So far the action has been presented to us through third person omniscient point of view. This is the
general way in classic Hollywood narrative: the camera stands outside the action looking in at it, as it
were. The camera has brought us over the barriers that cut a man off from the world and we have been
given an insight into his last thoughts.
The brash strains of trumpets announce the end of the Prologue and introduce a newsreel film that
parodies a feature of the cinematic experience of cinemagoers in the last century, before the age of
television. Newsreels brought pictures of foreign lands and current events to audiences around the
world. The first caption of this newsreel announces the start of an obituary to the landlord of Xanadu.
We immediately connect this back to the images of the opening sequence. This is a story within a
story, the first of six in the course of the narrative. The romantic music that plays over the first shots
of the dead man’s estate and the caption taken from Tennyson have been arranged by the director of
the newsreel. So the opening point of view has shifted. (This will become a major feature of the
narrative structure and style of this film that will greatly influence the mise en scène and explain
changes in the tone and treatment of characters and events as the film progresses.) Kane is being
presented to us as an almost mythological figure on a par with characters from epic poetry, ancient
history and the Bible. In fact, he is presented as surpassing them, as the pompous voice-over says
Kubla Khan’s Xanadu was almost as legendary as Florida’s! When Charles Foster Kane’s “private
pleasuredrome” and “private mountain” are mentioned, the audience might recall the image that
opened the film. One hundred thousand trees and twenty thousand tons of marble went into the
creation of this mountain.
The contents of the pleasuredrome consisted of paintings, pictures, statues and the very stones of
many another palace. The images in the newsreel are joined by wipes, as each pushes the previous one
off the screen from left to right. The last term used for the contents is “the loot of the world.” This is a
loaded word and gives an indication of the editorial tone of the newsreel, which is cataloguing Kane’s
achievements but doing so in an ironic way. The list of the animals Kane acquired builds to a
crescendo using quasi-Biblical terms that culminate in the mention of Noah. Then the Pharaohs and
the Pyramids are mentioned. Increasingly lower bass notes accompany the narrator’s summation of
Kane’s building achievements: “The most expensive monument a man has built to himself.” The
counterpoint between the references made in the narration and the mise en scène establishes the tone
as mock-heroic.
The newsreel music segues into a funeral march and the caption refers to “... 1941’s biggest, strangest
funeral”. Newsreel footage shows men doffing their hats out of respect as Kane’s coffin is carried
from a chapel. This opening sequence of the newsreel’s story is rounded off with another reference to
Kubla Khan.
The front page of the New York Inquirer is featured then. It is entirely devoted to Kane. It shows a
bright photograph of an avuncular, jovial man surrounded by flattering copy. The Daily Chronicle
front page is shown next and the accompanying photograph presents Kane dressed in a black coat and
hat. While his death gets the headline and a major photograph, there is only one article devoted to the
event. This contradictory treatment is reprised in themontage of international front pages that follows
as Kane is referred to as a Fascist in one and a sponsor of democracy in another.
The next caption introduces a segment on Kane’s publishing career. Accompanied by a loud fanfare, it
announces in glowing terms the size of his readership and declares him the greatest publisher of all
time. It adds that he was himself never out of the headlines. A van bearing the name of the Inquirer
passes by the ramshackle building in which Kane started his media career. Hearkening back to earlier
references to Kubla Khan and the Pharaohs, the narrator refers repeatedly to Kane’s empire. We are
told that he built up a commercial empire of grocery stores, paper mills, apartment buildings, factories,
forests and ocean liners using money garnered from the world’s third richest gold-mine in Colorado.
The newsreel then shows a photograph of Mary Kane and her son. She clasps his hand in hers and
gazes on him intently. They are both well dressed and at ease in each other’s company. Other family
photographs of the time might have shown the father standing proudly with puffed chest and a hand in
his waistcoat pocket. The fact that this is not the case here might suggest a lack. The information that
Mary Kane ran a boarding house might come as a surprise, having seen her proud demeanour in the
photographic portrait. A painting of “The Home of Charles Foster Kane, Near Salem” shows the
humble boarding house. In 1868 a boarder who had been staying there could not pay his rent and gave
Mrs Kane the deeds to his abandoned mineshaft instead.
In 1998, the American Film Institute put Citizen Kane at the top of its list of the one hundred greatest
movies of all time. Released in 1941, it was the first movie Orson Welles co-wrote, directed, and
produced. Welles was only twenty-five at the time and widely considered to be a theatrical genius.
Because of Hollywood's efforts to woo him from the theaters of New York, he received an almost
unprecedented amount of creative control from RKO Studios in his first contract. He was free to
choose the cast as well as to write, direct, produce, edit, and act in the film he created. His budget was
$500,000—a significant amount for an unproven filmmaker and an amount that Welles managed to
exceed. Citizen Kane wound up a commercial failure, and it ultimately derailed Welles’s career.
History has vindicated Welles by recognizing his cinematic genius, but the story of his life makes for
a cautionary tale every bit as compelling as the story of Charles Foster Kane, the fictitious protagonist
of Citizen Kane.
Background:
George Orson Welles was born in 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and endured a difficult childhood.
His parents, Richard and Beatrice, were prominent in their community, but Richard was also an
alcoholic. They separated when Welles was four. Welles and his mother moved to Chicago, where he
became the focus of her hopes and dreams. Welles could do no wrong in her eyes, and he developed a
precocious sense of his own abilities. Beatrice died when Welles was nine, leaving him in the custody
of his father and of Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a pediatrician to whom Beatrice had grown close because
of their shared love of classical music and opera. When Welles was fifteen, his father died, and Welles
became the sole ward of Dr. Bernstein. The instability of Welles’s childhood did not thwart his talents
and ambitions, and when Dr. Bernstein sent Welles to a prestigious private school, he thrived. His
interest in the theater led him to begin producing plays at school, and his talent for writing, acting,
producing, and directing caught the attention of the local media.
When Welles graduated, Dr. Bernstein sent him to Ireland with the hope that he would forget the
theater. Instead, Welles made his theatrical debut in Dublin, then went on to appear in roles in England
and America. In 1934, he made his New York theatrical debut, married Virginia Nicholson, directed
his first short film, and made his first radio appearance. Around this time, Welles also met John
Houseman, who became his partner and mentor. After working together for several years staging plays
for the Federal Theatre Project, Houseman and Welles formed the Mercury Theatre in 1937 to produce
classic plays and radio specials. From this collaboration came Mercury Theatre on the Air. On
October 30, 1938, the Mercury Theatre gave its most famous broadcast, a production of War of the
Worlds. Performing the play as if it were a newscast, Welles convinced many who tuned in that aliens
were invading New Jersey. The resulting panic made Welles the most talked about actor in America.
Welles’s notoriety caught the attention of Nelson Rockefeller, co-owner of RKO Studios in
Hollywood. RKO was best known for its frothy comedies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,
but RKO’s board of directors wanted to make the type of artistically important movies that its rivals
were turning out. Rockefeller felt that Welles’s theatrical genius could improve the quality of RKO’s
pictures and urged RKO president George J. Schaefer to lure him west. Welles initially wasn’t
interested, primarily because at that time movies and the people who acted in them lacked the
credibility of live theater and its players. Schaefer eventually made Welles an offer he couldn’t refuse:
a contract that gave him almost total artistic control over a project from start to finish. This kind of
contract was unprecedented and is even more remarkable because major studios of this era controlled
every aspect of their product. Welles couldn’t resist being the star of such a coup, and he moved to
Hollywood in 1939.
Plenty of people in Hollywood hoped Welles would fail. He had made no secret of his disdain for
"movie people," and many resented the fact that this inexperienced young man had been given so
much creative license. Welles knew of this resentment and was determined to turn out something
spectacular. He first planned to do a film based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, but due
to the extraordinary budget the project would require, the idea failed. After five months in Hollywood,
Welles was viewed as a failure himself. He felt a great deal of pressure when he began working on
Citizen Kane, the story of a powerful man who alienates everyone who loves him. Although Welles
denied it, he almost certainly based the movie on the life of press magnate William Randolph Hearst,
and Hearst was not happy with the result. Hearst was probably upset by having a fictionalized account
made of his life, no matter how close to the truth that account was, but Welles’s cruel portrayal of
Hearst's mistress Marion Davies was most likely what spurred Hearst’s full wrath. Hearst used his
considerable influence over the media to quell any mention of Citizen Kane. In addition, several film
executives from other studios, led by an old friend of Hearst named Louis Mayer, offered RKO a vast
sum of money for the film in order to destroy it completely. It is not clear whether their gesture was
one of loyalty to Hearst or one of fear of the possible backlash should Hearst decide that his
Hollywood friends were snubbing him, but in any case, RKO refused to hand over the film.
Hearst’s friends may have failed at keeping the movie out of theaters entirely, but Hearst’s efforts did
result in the movie’s delay and a limited run. Hearst's crippling tactics cost the film the commercial
success that would have cemented Welles’s reputation as a great filmmaker. Critics praised Citizen
Kane, but after its run ended, RKO and other studios admitted that Welles’s tendency toward
controversy made them reluctant to work with him. Moreover, no studio wanted to incur the wrath of
the influential Hearst papers. Welles’s arrogance toward the Hollywood establishment and his meanspirited portrayal of Marion Davies, who was well-liked in Hollywood, didn’t help his cause. Citizen
Kane went on to receive nine Academy Award nominations, but won only one, for writing. The
audience booed when the award was announced. Welles never made another important film.
Citizen Kane didn’t receive the viewership or accolades it deserved until the 1950s, when the film’s
considerable innovations became clearer. The cinematographer, Gregg Toland, who went on to
achieve great fame, used techniques such as deep focus, low camera angles, and optical illusions to
tell Kane’s story. For the first time, ceilings were visible in several scenes, created by draping black
fabric over the lights and microphones that hung from the top of the sound stage. Toland’s skillful
application of new or rarely used techniques proved revolutionary. Some of the film’s innovations that
had contributed to its commercial failure, including the non-linear narrative and somber conclusion,
eventually set Citizen Kane apart from films with more traditional structures and happy endings.
Along with its remarkable cinematic achievements, what ultimately elevated Citizen Kane to such
revered heights was the character of Kane himself. Despite the reporter's attempts to uncover the real
Kane, Kane remains an enigma. The depth of Kane's isolation and loneliness results in a portrait that
has haunted and will continue to haunt generations of audiences.
Name
Comparative: CK
Suggested Key Moments
So many moments in Welles's film can fit be deemed as important. The burning of the sled
"Rosebud," the dropping of the snow globe, or even the loud whisper of "Rosebud" as Kane's final
words could all constitute as significant scenes from the film. In seeking to enhance the idea that any
scene from Citizen Kane is groundbreaking, I would suggest the scene that interrupts the opening of
the film is significant.
When the audience is left with Kane died and his last words, the viewer is abruptly taken to a film
room of Kane's life. The media has seized on the story. Thompson is seen wondering openly about
"Rosebud." In the deep focus shot, the viewer sees footage of Kane's life, as well as the media
seeking to make a story about it. Adding to this is how the viewer never really sees Thompson. We
simply hear his voice and the demands of the media wanting to know more is almost akin to a faceless
voice that simply craves more without anything else.
Welles's genius is seen in this scene in a couple of ways. The first is that it shows how there is a
celebrity consumption process in modern society that refuses to restrain itself. Death does not stop
this machine, but actually accelerates the process. In never being able to see Thompson, Welles
develops this mechanized aspect of the media. The media simply wants to consume something else.
The deep focus shot helps bring everything into this moment, a reflection of how the mass
consumerism of society reduces and dehumanizes everything in its path. As we understand more
about Kane himself, this scene gains even more significance as Kane, himself, helped to create this
machine that devours even him in death. Another reason why the scene is so important is that it
shows how the modern setting is one where information is present, but truth is absent. Thompson is
shown to simply want to assemble information. He might claim to want to know more about "the
truth" about "Rosebud," yet there is nothing transcendent being sought. It is a scene that helps to
illuminate how the modern setting has brought about greater access to information, but little in way of
paradigm to understand it in a meaningful manner.
This opening scene regarding the media is important because it establishes both the technical structure
and thematic relevance of the film. Thompson's assembling of insight and facts about Kane's life
starts from this scene. We see the desire for information and atomized bits of knowledge, with
nothing meaningful grasped. Thompson embarks on his quest in this scene, only to concede that he is
nowhere farther in its understanding at the end of the film. At the same time, Welles is able to use this
opening to help assemble the plot narrative of Kane's life. As Thompson assembles information and
he comes to know Kane, so does the audience. Through this, Welles is able to bring about reflection
from the audience about the media and its role in understanding celebrity. This scene acquires
importance on both thematic and storytelling levels.
I would like to suggest that the big, elaborate picnic scene at Xanadu might be considered the most
significant because it is the only place where the film's thesis is actually spelled out in words. The
black singer's lyrics, which are interwoven with the action between Kane and his wife in their elegant
tent, could go unnoticed, but what he is singing several times is: It can't be love, Cause there is no
true love.
Kane has no faith in human love because his mother sent him away from Colorado when he was a
little boy. This separation and, as it seemed to him, this betrayal shaped his character for the rest of his
life.
Genre
Roger Ebert, noted film critic, on CK:
"Rosebud." The most famous word in the history of cinema. It explains everything, and nothing.
Who, for that matter, actually heard Charles Foster Kane say it before he died? The butler says, late in
the film, that he did. But Kane seems to be alone when he dies, and the reflection on the shard of glass
from the broken paperweight shows the nurse entering the room. Gossip has it that the screenwriter,
Herman Mankiewicz, used "rosebud" as an inside joke, because as a friend of Hearst's mistress,
Marion Davies, he knew "rosebud" was the old man's pet name for the most intimate part of her
anatomy.
Deep Focus. Everyone knows that Orson Welles and his cinematographer, Gregg Toland, used deep
focus in Kane. But what is deep focus, and were they using it for the first time? The term refers to a
strategy of lighting, composition, and lens choice that allows everything in the frame, from the front to
the back, to be in focus at the same time. With the lighting and lenses available in 1941, this was just
becoming possible, and Toland had experimented with the technique in John Ford's The Long Voyage
Home a few years earlier. In most movies, the key elements in the frame are in focus, and those closer
or further away may not be. When everything is in focus, the filmmakers must give a lot more thought
to how they direct the viewer's attention, first here and then there. What the French call mise-enscene--the movement within the frame-- becomes more important.
Optical illusions. Deep focus is especially tricky because movies are two-dimensional, and so you
need visual guideposts to determine the true scale of a scene. Toland used this fact as a way to fool the
audience's eye on two delightful occasions in the film. One comes when Kane is signing away control
of his empire in Thatcher's office. Behind him on the wall are windows that look of normal size and
height. Then Kane starts to walk into the background of the shot, and we realize with surprise that the
windows are huge, and their lower sills are more than six feet above the floor. As Kane stands under
them, he is dwarfed--which is the intent, since he has just lost great power. Later in the film, Kane
walks over to stand in front of the great fireplace in Xanadu, and we realize it, too, is much larger than
it first seemed.
Visible ceilings. In almost all movies before Citizen Kane, you couldn't see the ceilings in rooms
because there weren't any. That's where you'd see the lights and microphones. Welles wanted to use a
lot of low-angle shots that would look up toward ceilings, and so Toland devised a strategy of cloth
ceilings that looked real but were not. The microphones were hidden immediately above the ceilings,
which in many shots are noticeably low.
Matte drawings. These are drawings by artists that are used to create elements that aren't really there.
Often they are combined with "real" foregrounds. The opening and closing shots of Kane's great
castle, Xanadu, are examples. No exterior set was ever built for the structure. Instead, artists drew it,
and used lights behind it to suggest Kane's bedroom window. "Real" foreground details such as Kane's
lagoon and private zoo were added.
Invisible wipes. A "wipe" is a visual effect that wipes one image off the screen while wiping another
into view. Invisible wipes disguise themselves as something else on the screen that seems to be
moving, so you aren't aware of the effect. They are useful in "wiping" from full-scale sets to miniature
sets. For example: One of the most famous shots in Kane shows Susan Alexander's opera debut, when,
as she starts to sing, the camera moves straight up to a catwalk high above the stage, and one
stagehand turns to another and eloquently reviews her performance by holding his nose. Only the
stage and the stagehands on the catwalk are real. The middle portion of this seemingly unbroken shot
is a miniature, built in the RKO model workshop. The model is invisibly wiped in by the stage
curtains, as we move up past them, and wiped out by a wooden beam right below the catwalk. Another
example: In Walter Thatcher's library, the statue of Thatcher is a drawing, and as the camera pans
down it wipes out the drawing as it wipes in the set of the library.
Invisible Furniture Moving. In the early scene in the Kanes's cabin in Colorado, the camera tracks
back from a window to a table where Kane's mother is being asked to sign a paper. The camera tracks
right through where the table would be, after which it is slipped into place before we can see it. But a
hat on the table is still trembling from the move. After she signs the paper, the camera pulls up and
follows her as she walks back toward the window. If you look sharply, you can see that she's walking
right through where the table was a moment before.
The Neatest Flash-Forward in Kane. Between Thatcher's words "Merry Christmas" and "... a very
Happy New Year," two decades pass.
From Model to Reality. As the camera swoops above the night club and through the skylight to
discover Susan Alexander Kane sitting forlornly at a table, it goes from a model of the nightclub roof
to a real set. The switch is concealed, the first time, by a lightning flash. The second time we go to the
nightclub, it's done with a dissolve.
Crowd scenes. There aren't any in Citizen Kane. It only looks like there are. In the opening newsreel,
stock footage of a political rally is intercut with a low-angle shot showing one man speaking on behalf
of Kane. Sound effects make it sound like he's at a big outdoor rally. Later, Kane himself addresses a
gigantic indoor rally. Kane and the other actors on the stage are real. The audience is a miniature, with
flickering lights to suggest movement.
Slight Factual Discrepancies. In the opening newsreel, Xanadu is described as being "on the desert
coast of Florida." But Florida does not have a desert coast, as you can plainly see during the picnic
scene, where footage from an earlier RKO prehistoric adventure was back-projected behind the actors,
and if you look closely, that seems to be a pterodactyl flapping its wings.
The Luce Connection. Although Citizen Kane was widely seen as an attack on William Randolph
Hearst, it was also aimed at Henry R. Luce and his concept of faceless group journalism, as then
practiced at his Time magazine and March of Time newsreels. The opening "News on the March"
segment is a deliberate parody of the Luce newsreel, and the reason you can never see the faces of any
of the journalists is that Welles and Mankiewicz were kidding the anonymity of Luce's writers and
editors.
An Extra with a Future. Alan Ladd can be glimpsed in the opening newsreel sequence, and again in
the closing warehouse scene.
Most Thankless Job on the Movie. It went to William Alland, who plays Mr. Thompson, the
journalist assigned to track down the meaning of "Rosebud." He is always seen from behind, or in
backlit profile. You can never see his face. At the movie's world premiere, Alland told the audience he
would turn his back so they could recognize him more easily.
The Brothel Scene. It couldn't be filmed. In the original screenplay, after Kane hires away the staff of
the Chronicle, he takes them to a brothel. The Production Code office wouldn't allow that. So the
scene, slightly changed, takes place in the Inquirer newsroom, still with the dancing girls.
The Eyeless Cockatoo. Yes, you can see right through the eyeball of the shrieking cocatoo, in the
scene before the big fight between Kane and Susan. It's a mistake.
The Most Evocative Shot in the Movie. There are many candidates. My choice is the shot showing
an infinity of Kanes reflected in mirrors as he walks past.
The Best Speech in Kane. My favorite is delivered by Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), when he is
talking about the magic of memory with the inquiring reporter: "A fellow will remember a lot of
things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to
Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl
waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one
second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since, that I haven't thought of that
girl."
Genuine Modesty. In the movie's credits, Welles allowed his director's credit and Toland's
cinematography credit to appear on the same card--an unprecedented gesture that indicated how
grateful Welles was.
False Modesty. In the unique end credits, the members of the Mercury Company are introduced and
seen in brief moments from the movie. Then smaller parts are handled with a single card containing
many names. The final credit down at the bottom, in small type, says simply: Kane...............Orson
Welles
Key Facts
DIRECTOR · Orson Welles Cinematographer: Gregg Toland Screenplay: Herman J. Mankiewicz,
Orson Welles
LEADING ACTOR/ACTRESSES · Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett
Sloane
SUPPORTING ACTORS/ACTRESSES · George Coulouris, Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Harry
Shannon, William Alland, Ray Collins
TYPE OF WORK · Full-length feature film GENRE · Drama, biopic
LANGUAGE · English TIME AND PLACE PRODUCED · 1940–1941, Hollywood
AWARDS · Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, New York Critics Award for Best Picture
DATE OF RELEASE · May 1, 1941 PRODUCER · Orson Welles
SETTING (TIME) · Approximately 1860 to 1950
SETTING (PLACE) · America: Rural West, New York, Florida, Chicago
PROTAGONIST · Charles Foster Kane
MAJOR CONFLICT · Kane tries to control press coverage of his political career and suppress his
affair.
RISING ACTION · Kane’s political rival, Jim “Boss” Gettys, forces a showdown between Kane,
Kane’s wife, and Susan Alexander in an attempt to force Kane from the governor’s race.
CLIMAX · Kane chooses to stay with Susan and sends his wife away while daring Gettys to expose
him by threatening impotently that he’ll make sure Gettys goes to prison.
FALLING ACTION · The papers are filled with the news of Kane’s “love nest,” and he loses the
election.
THEMES · The difficulty of interpreting a life; the myth of the American Dream; the unreliability of
memory
MOTIFS · Isolation; old age; materialism; SYMBOLS · Sleds; snow globe; statues
CK’s Innovative Cinematic Techniques / Filmic Elements
Welles's achievements in this film marked a new direction in cinema. Many critics argue that Citizen
Kane, with its inventive use of lighting and shadow, is the first film noir, or at least the direct
predecessor of noir, a genre that employs dark, moody atmosphere to augment the often violent or
mysterious events taking place. Citizen Kane introduced Hollywood to the creative potential of
cinematic technique. Even apart from the controversy the film stirred, a multitude of innovations made
Citizen Kane the most exciting movie in the history of cinema at that time.
Fade-in: Necessary for the beginning of a scene. A dark screen gradually brightens as the shot
appears.
Fade-out: A shot gradually darkens as the screen goes black.
Fourth wall: Audience occupies the fourth wall, looking in on what is happening (as in a theatre).
Breaking the fourth wall happens when a character addresses the audience, turns to the camera,
comments on the fact they are aware that they are in a play etc.
Dissolves
Welles frequently achieves his transition from one shot to another through dissolves. This often has
the effect of concealing an absence of props or sets on the screen through a rich layering of different
images. This layering was also created through using double exposures. A foreground figure would be
filmed, the film would be rethreaded and the background figures would then be shot onto the same
piece of film. Dissolves, because they may take several seconds to achieve, tend to slow down the
pace of’ the film. In several sequences Welles speeds up the pace of the film, often when he wishes, as
in Thatcher’s Christmas speech, to rapidly jump across the years. The most famous example of this is
the breakfast table sequence in which we
observe, through six scenes linked by whip wipes’, the decline of Kane’s first marriage.
Wipe
Citizen Kane introduced Hollywood to the creative potential of other cinematic techniques as well.
One such innovation was a technique known as the "wipe," where one image is "wiped" off the screen
by another. Other innovations involved unique experiments with camera angles.
Optical Printer
A number of the deep-focus effects that Toland had struggled to create in Citizen
Kane were special effects created with the optical printer, rather than the products of
wide-angle lenses and fast film. Many of the Xanadu shots were mattes - effectively
complex double-exposure shots. Up to 50% of the footage in Citizen Kane was
modified by Welles and Linwood Dunn on the optical printer -although several fadeins
and fade-outs, which could have been created with the optical printer, were
brought about through simply dimming the lights on the set!
Camera Shots:
Close-up: Used to film just the head or face.
Cut: An instant change from one frame to another.
Deep focus: Foreground, middle ground and background are all in focus.
Extreme close-up: Used to film very small details closely.
Frame: Single image.
Long Shot: Framing in which the scale of the object shown is small.
Montage: Sequence of images or scenes used to compress the passage of time, suggest memories,
summarise a topic, etc.
Point of view: There are a few variations of POV shots. Typically, it’s a shot taken where the camera
is placed where the character’s eyes would be, showing what the character would see (i.e. the
character is in possession of the perspective and we are looking through their eyes).
Panning: Camera swivels on its axis.
Tilting: Up-down movement.tilting
Tracking/Trucking/Dollying: Mounted camera moves following the action.
Trunk Shot: Specialised low-shot angle which captures the scene above from inside a trunk.
Indicative Lighting
Note how Welles uses lighting to express thematic ideas. When Kane writes his Declaration of
Principles, note that there is a shadow on his face — foreshadowing the false promise that this
document is to become. We literally cannot see his face at the very moment he’s declaring what he
stands for!
Musical Score
The above snowball splats in perfect timing with the musical score, penned by Welles’ good friend
Bernard Herrmann. The two had worked together in radio at Mercury Theater, where Herrmann
provided the music for Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast. The score is at times brooding
(“Prelude”), nostalgic (“Thatcher Library”) and triumphant (as in the “Overture”) He worked
alongside Welles on the film, composing as the
film was shot and cut, and Welles would often edit the film to fit the rhythm or length of Herrmann’s
compositions. Herrmann plundered RKO’s musical archives and composed or adapted music to fit the
mood of each sequence. For example, the background music whilst Thompson reads the Thatcher
papers is reminiscent of the slow unrelenting tick of a clock.
SOUND
During his time in radio, Welles had experimented with overlapping dialogue, dif’ferent sound
perspectives and a variety of’ other recording techniques. The sound engineers were delighted to
discover that Welles and his team (nearly all radio veterans) cared about the sound of Citizen Kane
and they seized the opportunity to show Welles what they could do. Welles uses sound to shock his
audience throughout the film. After the slow camera movements and sinister music of the opening
sequence at Xanadu, the sudden chord as the light is extinguished, is followed by the startlingly brash,
loud music and opening announcement of the “News On The March” sequence. This jerks the
audience to attention, much as the screeching parakeet that signals Susan’s leaving of Kane both
shocks the audience and prepares them for the dramatic wrecking of Susan s room.
Besides these ‘shock’ sound effects, Welles frequently uses ‘lightning mixes’, scenes linked by the
soundtrack rather than by the images. For example, Thatcher wishes the young Kane a falsely cheerful
“A Merry Christmas” but his greeting is concluded with an angry “and a prosperous New Year”
addressed to Kane as a
twenty-four year old. In a similar fashion, Kane’s applause of Susan s parlour-room piano playing is
linked to the applause of a small crowd for Leland’s campaign speech for Kane’s 1916 bid for
governorship. This, in turn, leads to a scene with Kane addressing a much larger meeting.,
Narrative Techniques
Foreshadowing
· The snow globe. Also known as the glass ball, the snow globe first appears in the dying Welles’s
hand at the beginning of the movie and foreshadows the later flashback to his abandonment as a child.
Chronologically, it first makes its appearance in Kane’s life the night he meets Susan. The snow globe
belongs to her and is sitting on her dressing table. We see it next when Susan leaves Kane and he
destroys her room. After this episode, Kane is left only with the snow globe, which foreshadows his
lonely death.
· Rosebud, the sled. We don’t know its name when we see it at the scene of young Kane’s
abandonment by his mother, but it foreshadows the film's final scene, when we finally learn the
meaning of Kane's last word.
· Crusader, the sled. Given to young Charles Kane by Thatcher, this sled foreshadows Charles’s later
crusading work against Thatcher and his business enterprises.
· Kane’s statement to Thatcher that if his paper lost $1 million a year he could still run it for sixty
years. This cocky comment foreshadows Kane’s bankruptcy and the selling of his assets to Thatcher.
· The scene in which Leland, in conversation with Bernstein, questions the new staff’s loyalty to
Kane. Kane has just stolen them from the rival paper by offering them more money. Leland wonders if
this is enough to make them loyal to Kane. Leland’s doubts foreshadow the departures of Leland and
Susan from Kane's life.
Deep Focus/ mise-en-scene
Citizen Kane made cinematic advances on many fronts, and its most significant contribution to
cinematography came from the use of a technique known as deep focus. Deep focus refers to having
everything in the frame, even the background, in focus at the same time, as opposed to having only the
people and things in the foreground in focus. The deep focus technique requires the cinematographer
to combine lighting, composition, and type of camera lens to produce the desired effect. With deep
focus, a filmmaker can showcase overlapping actions, and mise-en-scène (the physical environment in
which a film takes place) becomes more critical. Effectively manipulating the mise-en-scène for deep
focus actively engages the whole space of the frame without leaving the viewer confused. Deep focus
is most effective in scenes that depict Kane’s loss of control and his personal isolation because it gives
the audience a clear view of the space Kane commands as well as the space over which he has no
power.
When Kane signs over his newspaper to Thatcher, there is a brilliant display of using threedimensional space and mise-en-scene to express his character’s emotions. As Kane walks into the
background (as his father had when he signed Young Kane over to Thatcher many years before),
Welles creates the optical illusion of Kane shrinking. This is in part due to perspective and part due to
the construction of oversized windows on the back wall. The effect is clear: Kane feels “small.” Then,
the moment Thatcher reads a clause that will allow Kane to maintain some control, Kane walks back
toward the camera, growing larger as his control is restored.Gregg Toland, the cinematographer
Welles chose for Citizen Kane, had used the technique in an earlier film he had worked on, The Long
Voyage Home, but Citizen Kane marked the first time it was used so extensively or effectively.
Watch again the sequence in which Thatcher visits the Kanes to tell them of their son's good fortune.
Grim-faced Mrs Kane and lawyer Thatcher dominate the scene, apparently, since they are the large
figures in the foreground whilst Mr
Kane hovers weakly to one side. But centre left of the screen is a light square, the window, through
which we can see the young Kane playing happily in the snow and it is he, the smallest figure on the
screen, who is, paradoxically, the most important character in the shot since all three characters are
discussing his future.
As the snow obscures him, his cries are ignored and eventually Mr Kane shuts the window on him.
We witness Kane's happiness vanish in front of us, as we hear how his life will be changed forever.
Flashbacks
Citizen Kane employs creative storytelling techniques as well. Acting almost as a biopic
(biographical film), Citizen Kaneportrays a long period of time realistically, allowing the characters to
age as the story goes on. Instead of being told in a linear, completely chronological manner, Kane’s
story unfolds in overlapping segments that add more information as each narrator adds his or her
story. Telling Kane’s life story entirely in flashbacks was another innovative approach to storytelling.
Flashbacks had been used in earlier films, but Citizen Kane used them most effectively. The
flashbacks are given from the perspectives of characters who are aging or forgetful, which casts doubt
on the memories being discussed. In other words, these are unreliable narrators whose own opinions
and interpretations affect their accuracy. The storytelling techniques succeed in painting Charles
Foster Kane as an enigma, a tortured, complicated man who, in the end, leaves viewers with more
questions than answers and inevitably invokes sympathy rather than contempt.
The film is composed nine sections, each told by a different narrator, all of whom also fiqure
in some of the other flashbacks:
* The introduction;
* The newsreel and projection room;
* Thompson's visit to Susan Alexander Kane;
* Thompson's visit to the Thatcher Library;
* Thompson's interriew with Bernstein;
* Thompson's interriew with Le/and;
* Thompson's interriew with Susan Alexander Kane;
* Thompson's conversation with Raymond;
* The Finale.
Slow Disclosure
The opening might be the most famous in all of movie history, as Welles slowly approaches Xanadu,
moving up the mountain and closer to the castle with a series of dissolving images. Once he reaches
the outside of Kane’s bedroom window, we get a brilliant bit of trickery — a seamless dissolve from
outside to inside, using the window as a visual anchor. As snow covers the screen, we think we’re
looking at the inside of a snow globe, but as the camera pulls back, we realize that the snow is
superimposed over Kane’s entire room (reflections of his snowy childhood memories).
Transitions
Welles comes up with a number of clever transitions between scenes. My favorite is the zoom in on a
photograph of the The Inquirer‘s rival newspaper staff, The Chronicle. With a barely noticeable
dissolve, the photo comes to life in a live-action shot of the men as they join The Inquirer‘s staff.
Montage: Progression
Perhaps the most brilliant sequence in the film is the montage of Kane and Emily aging at the
breakfast table. Welles sees to it that in each segment of the montage, the table grows longer and
longer, until by the end of the montage, they are sitting miles apart. It symbolizes their growing
“distance” from one another.
Character Building
Acting
In Citizen Kane, however, Welles was able to cast his unknown Mercury Players, and much of the
success of the film stems from how well their theatrical training worked within the dramatic
framework of the movie. The fact that they were unknowns actually may have contributed to their
effectiveness, since more recognizable players may have distracted viewers from the story.
Welles’s chosen Mercury Theatre cast was an asset to the film and vital to the success of techniques
like deep focus. These cast members were classically trained theatrical actors, and none had ever made
a movie before Welles brought them to Hollywood. Their stage training, rather than being
overpowering, helped them to place themselves firmly in each scene, which complements the use of
deep focus. The cinematography and acting technique combined so perfectly that the total control
Welles was given over casting was justified. The combination of innovative techniques, not one
individual technique, is what makes Citizen Kane such a cinematically important film.
Symbols/Motifs
Sleds
Two sleds appear in Citizen Kane. Rosebud, the sled Kane loves as a child, appears at the beginning,
during one of Kane’s happiest moments, and at the end, being burned with the rest of Kane’s
possessions after Kane dies. “Rosebud” is the last word Kane utters, which not only emphasizes how
alone Kane is but also suggests Kane’s inability to relate to people on an adult level. Rosebud is the
most potent emblem of Kane’s childhood, and the comfort and importance it represents for him are
rooted in the fact that it was the last item he touched before being taken from his home. When Kane
meets Thatcher, who has come to take him from his mother, Kane uses his sled to resist Thatcher by
shoving it into Thatcher’s body. In this sense, the sled serves as a barrier between his carefree youth
and the responsibilities of adulthood and marks a turning point in the development of his character.
After Thatcher's appearance, Kane's life is never again the same. Later, Thatcher gives Kane another
sled, this one named Crusader—aptly named, since Kane will spend his early adulthood on a vengeful
crusade against Thatcher. For the second time, Kane uses a sled (or in this case, the idea it represents)
as a weapon against the man he sees as an oppressive force, but unlike Rosebud, Crusader carries no
suggestion of innocence. Reportedly, the idea of using the plot device of Rosebud came from writer
Herman Mankiewicz. The story goes that he had a bicycle he adored as a child, and he never really
recovered when it was stolen. Welles always thought it was a rather cheap idea, but he went along
with it because it was an easy way to simplify the plot line. You need not be a lonely mogul to
appreciate this theme. Anyone who has ever had an imaginary friend, a favorite blanky or stuffed
animal can relate. All who have gone from the innocence of youth to the weight of adulthood can
relate to yearning for a simpler time. Even FDR said that in times of stress (you know, little things like
World War II and The Great Depression) he used to think about his childhood sledding down a hill at
Hyde Park in order to fall asleep. This is what “Rosebud” represents, a theme Sam Peckinpah would
articulate best in The Wild Bunch: “We all dream of being a child again. Even the worst of us. Perhaps
the worst most of all.”
In this light, certain scenes take on new thematic weight upon second look. When Thatcher comes to
take Kane away, note how the young Kane symbolically uses his sled as a shield to push Thatcher
away. Then, watch as the time-lapse photography shows his sled slowly buried by snow; his childhood
buried by the sands of time.
Snow Globe
The snow globe that falls from Kane’s hand when he dies links the end of his life to his childhood.
The scene inside the snow globe is simple, peaceful, and orderly, much like Kane’s life with his
parents before Thatcher comes along. The snow globe also associates these qualities with Susan. Kane
sees the snow globe for the first time when he meets Susan. On that same night, he’s thinking about
his mother, and he even speaks of her, one of only two times he mentions her throughout the film. In
his mind, Susan and his mother become linked. Susan, like Kane’s mother, is a simple woman, and
Kane enjoys their quiet times in her small apartment where he’s free from the demands of his complex
life. Susan eventually leaves him, just as his mother did, and her departure likewise devastates him. As
Kane trashes Susan’s room in anger, he finds the snow globe, and the already-thin wall between his
childhood and adulthood dissolves. Just as his mother abandoned him once, Susan has abandoned him
now, and Kane is powerless to bring back either one.
Statues
Kane repeatedly fails in his attempts to control the people in his life, which perhaps explains his
obsession with collecting statues and the appearance of statues throughout the film, since statues can
be easily manipulated. Thatcher, threatening and oppressive when alive, is harmless as a large,
imposing statue outside the bank where his memoirs are housed. When Kane travels to Europe, he
collects so many statues that he begins to acquire duplicates, even though Bernstein has begged him
not to buy any more. Kane’s office and home overflow with statues, which he acquires without joy or
discrimination. Kane has always aspired to control people, not just the world’s fine art, but puts his
energy into collecting statues as his power over people swiftly and fully dissolves. For Kane, statues
are nothing more than images of people, easily controlled—he can place them where he wants and
even ignore them if he chooses. Over his statues, Kane has power: to acquire, to own, and to control.
Statues eventually replace living people in Kane’s life, and he dies surrounded by these figures.
CK: Plot Overview
Citizen Kane opens with the camera panning across a spooky, seemingly deserted estate in Florida
called Xanadu. The camera lingers on a "No Trespassing" sign and a large "K" wrought on the gate,
then gradually makes its way to the house, where it appears to pass through a lit window. A person is
lying on a slab-like bed. Snowflakes suddenly fill the screen. As the camera pulls back, a snowcovered cabin comes into view. The camera pulls back more quickly to show that what we have been
looking at is actually just a scene inside a snow globe in the hand of an old man. The camera focuses
on the old man’s mouth, which whispers one word: "Rosebud." He then drops the globe, which rolls
onto the floor and shatters. Reflected in the curve of a piece of shattered glass, a door opens and a
white-uniformed nurse comes into the room. She folds the old man’s arms over his chest and covers
his face with a sheet.
In the next scene, a newsreel entitled News on the March announces the death of Charles Foster Kane,
a famous, once-influential newspaper publisher. The newsreel, which acts as a lengthy obituary, gives
an overview of Kane’s colorful life and career and introduces some of the important people and events
in Kane’s life. The newsreel plays in a small projection room filled with reporters. The producer of the
newsreel tells the reporters he’s not happy with the film because it merely recounts Kane’s life,
instead of revealing who Kane truly was. He notes that Kane’s last word was "Rosebud" and wonders
if that may hold the key to Kane’s character. He decides to stall the newsreel’s release and sends a
reporter, Jerry Thompson, to talk to Kane’s former associates to try to uncover the identity of
Rosebud.
Thompson first interviews Kane’s ex-wife, Susan Alexander Kane, who works as a dancer and singer
in a dingy bar. Susan is drunk and uncooperative. A waiter hovers over her and tells Thompson that
Susan has been unwilling to talk about Kane since he died, although she spoke of him often when he
was alive. The waiter also says he asked Susan about Rosebud after Kane died and she claimed she’d
never heard of Rosebud. Thompson then goes to the bank that houses the memoirs of Kane’s
childhood guardian, Walter Parks Thatcher. As Thompson begins to read these memoirs, the image of
the page dissolves into a flashback to Kane’s childhood.
A roughly chronological series of flashbacks tells Kane’s life story from five different points of view.
The first flashback shows how Thatcher meets Kane. Kane’s mother, Mary, runs a boarding house in
rural Colorado. In lieu of a payment, one of her tenants gives her some stock in what she thinks is a
worthless mine; it turns out to give her ownership of the Colorado Lode, a working gold mine. Finding
herself suddenly wealthy, she decides to send away her son, Charles, to be raised by her banker,
Thatcher. Charles is understandably upset and whacks Thatcher with the sled he's been happily riding
when Thatcher shows up to escort him away. Kane’s relationship with Thatcher never improves.
Vignettes from their years together show Kane engaging in questionable journalism, wasting money,
and constantly enraging Thatcher.
Thompson interviews other people who were close to Kane, and these characters relate their memories
of the man through flashbacks as well. Thompson speaks first with Kane’s good friends and
employees, Mr. Bernstein and Jedediah Leland, and has one more conversation with his ex-wife
Susan. Most significantly, Thompson interviews the butler, Raymond, who remembers Kane saying
“Rosebud” following a violent episode after Susan left him. Each person gives his or her own version
of an abandoned, lonely boy who grows up to be an isolated, needy man. All reveal in some way that
Kane is arrogant, thoughtless, morally bankrupt, desperate for attention, and incapable of giving love.
These faults eventually cause Kane to lose his paper, fortune, friends, and beloved second wife, Susan.
Thompson, the reporter, never does find out what Kane meant by "Rosebud." Giving up the quest,
Thompson is leaving Kane’s abandoned castle, Xanadu, when the camera pans a scene of workers
burning some of Kane’s less valuable possessions. In the fire is the sled that Kane was riding the day
his mother sent him away. Painted on the sled is the name Rosebud.
Cultural Context:
The Myth of the American Dream/ Capitalism and its Discontents
Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to depict the American Dream as anything less than
desirable. As a child, Kane is fully happy as he plays in the snow outside the family’s home, even
though his parents own a boarding house and are quite poor. He has no playmates but is content to be
alone because peace and security are just inside the house’s walls. When Thatcher removes Kane from
this place, he’s given what seems like the American dream—financial affluence and material luxury.
However, Kane finds that those things don’t make him happy, and the exchange of emotional security
for financial security is ultimately unfulfilling. The American dream is hollow for Kane. As an adult,
Kane uses his money and power not to build his own happiness but to either buy love or make others
as miserable as he is. Kane's wealth isolates him from others throughout the years, and his life ends in
loneliness at Xanadu. He dies surrounded only by his possessions, poor substitutions for true
companions.
Kane: You long-faced, overdressed anarchist.
Leland: I am not overdressed.
Materialism
Charles Foster Kane is a rapacious collector. At one point, in a newspaper office so filled with statues
that the employees can barely move around, Bernstein notes that they have multiple, duplicate statues
of Venus (the goddess of physical beauty). Kane obsessively fills his estate with possessions, and at
the end of the movie the camera pans across massive rooms filled with crates to show that he never
even unpacked many of his purchases. Kane’s collecting is not that of a discriminating connoisseur—
he buys art objects so fervently that his behavior more closely resembles the ravenous actions of a
predator. After his disappointments in the political arena and with Susan’s opera career, Kane builds
his estate, Xanadu, to isolate himself and Susan from those who spurned his attempts at manipulation,
and he fills the castle with inanimate objects. He wields complete control over the world he’s created,
and nothing can challenge his authority in this realm. Through his materialism Kane attempts to
ameliorate the insults of the real world, where he couldn’t control his mother’s abandonment, Susan’s
failed attempt at opera, the failure of his political career, and the souring opinions of his friends. He
ends up at Xanadu alone, with his possessions as his only companions. By purchasing so many
extravagant goods, Kane attempts to fill a void created by all the people who left him throughout his
life. Yet the only two possessions that carry meaning for Kane on his deathbed are a simple snow
globe and Rosebud, the sled he remembers from his youth.
Rosebud and Money
Who does Kane blame for losing Rosebud? Losing his innocence? Thatcher. As Kane hands
ownership of his newspaper to Thatcher, he says, “I always gagged on that silver spoon … if I hadn’t
been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” He realizes — at least momentarily — that
money cannot buy happiness. As he says, “It’s no trick to make a lotta money when all you want is to
make a lotta money.”
III. Poetry Overview
Past LC Exam Poets:
2015- Montague, Frost,
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Hardy
2014- Dickinson, Plath, Larkin, Yeats
2013- Bishop, Hopkins, Mahon, Plath
2012- Kinsella, Rich, Larkin, Kavanagh
2011- Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Boland
2010- Rich, Yeats, Kavanagh, Eliot
2009- Walcott, Keats, Montague, Bishop
2008- Rich, Larkin, Donne, Mahon
2007- Plath, Montague, Frost, Eliot
2006- Donne, Hardy, Bishop, Longley
2005- Boland, Dickinson, Eliot, Yeats
2004- Plath, Mahon, Kavanagh, Hopkins
2003- Donne, Frost, Plath, Heaney
2002-Shakespeare, Longley, Boland, Bishop
2001-Longley, Bishop, Larkin, Keats
Poetry: Prepared Poetry (50 marks/50 minutes/4 pages)
Memorise lines, references, literary devices, and analytical quotes, but remember that you have to use this arsenal
in the manner directed by the question. Potted analyses will only earn partial credit. Below are ‘specific’ type
questions. Remember that ‘general’ type questions are also possible: two or three prepared ‘specific’ essays can
be amalgamated into one general.
Writing critical essays about poetry:
1) We do 6 poets out of 8. 4 show up on exam. You pick 1.
2) Questions are either:
a) General: ‘Write an introduction…’; “What does ED mean to you…”; Award speech…
Ostensibly, this easy to prepare for: You get to choose which poems and themes to write about.
b) Specific: (more common lately): “ Discuss ED’s obsession with death”
Discuss ED’s close observation of nature” “Discuss how ED’s style was in many ways before its time”
c) Combo Questions: More common lately, combining theme and technique…
Some ‘general’ variations:
1. Personal response = expected to include sentences which use the pronoun ‘I‘. Talk about how the
poems made you feel. Identify what they taught you, how
2. they made you look at an issue(s) in a new way. Discuss what you enjoyed in the poet’s style of
writing. Explore how these themes are relevant to your life.
What impact did the poetry of ED make upon you? Language and Imagery. Refer to the poetry.
3. Discuss the feelings the poet creates in you. They have on occasions specified certain feelings. For
example, unhappiness in Larkin’s poetry, tension in Walcott’s poetry, sadness in Frost’s poetry, Plath as
‘intense & disturbing’. So make sure you know both what feelings the poet expresses in their work and
what feelings the poems create in you.
What emotional effect does the poetry of ED have on you as a reader?
4. Relevance for the modern reader. This came up in 2002 as a specific question on Bishop.
Despite writing in the 1800’s, ED’s style and thematic content is still relevant for readers today.
5. Appeal of a poet - what you like and/or dislike about their poetry. Very similar to personal response.
Why does the poetry of ED appeal to you?
6. Introduce a poet to new readers giving an overview of their themes & style and explaining why you
think they would enjoy reading these poems. This could be in the style of an article or written as a
speech/talk for classmates. More informal style.
Write a speech in which you explain to a LC audience why they should study ED.
7. Write a letter to the poet. You might want to ask them questions, where their inspiration come from
etc… Write a letter to ED explaining what her poetry means to you.
8. Choose a small selection for inclusion in an anthology & justify your selection. You would choose 4-5
poems, one to represent each major theme in their work. Ultimately, however, no matter what the
question you are still expected to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the poet’s themes & style of
writing, supporting this with detailed quotations.
Write the introduction to an anthology of ED’s poetry explaining why you chose certain poems.
How to plan and write a poetry essay.
1) Analyse and Code Question 2) Decide on aspects of question you will discuss 3) Pick poems/quotes which
prove aspects 4) Plot essay structure 5) Write intro (Hook. Restatement of question. Aspects and poems.)
Structure:
a)Thematic
Par2-3:Imagery(3poems)Par4-5:childhood/nature(3poems)Par6:Travel/death(2)
b)bypoem
Par2:(1)Startwithreftoquestion(subtly/similaicallyifpossible)
(2-5)Refertoaspectsofthemeandprovewithquotesandanalysis.
(6)Wrapupbyreturningtoquestion/theme.
Par3:(1)seguetopoem2withreftoquestion(2-5)refertodifferent/sameaspectsandprove….(6)Wrap,
return,suggest…
Emily Dickinson
Past ED LC Questions:
2014
“The dramatic aspects of Dickinson’s poetry can both disturb and delight readers.”
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the above statement? Support your answer with reference
to both the themes and language found in the poetry of Emily Dickinson on your course. D/DE
2011
2005
Potential Specific ED Questions:
1. “ED is a close observer of nature and her typically idiosyncratic description and analysis of natural
phenomena bring a freshness to an otherwise solemn body of work”. Discuss.
2. Death and psychological issues are the dominant themes of several of ED’s darker poems. Discuss how
she deals with these themes innovatively.
3. ED is well known for her individualistic style and innovative technique. Discuss with reference to the
poetry.
4. ‘Emily Dickinson does not shy away from the big issues such as death and mental illness, and her
innovative technique makes her explorations thought-provoking and even startling.’ Discuss with
reference to the poetry.
5. Write the Introduction to the Emily Dickinson section of your Poetry Textbook, explaining why You
have included her, and which Poems you have Chosen.
6.
Two types of structure:
1) Poem by poem: Choose your relevant poems and link them one-by-one to your theme(s).
2) Thematic/Aspect Structure: According to aspects of theme.
Each paragraph deals with an aspect and refers to a few poems.
ED Sample Essay Plans: Nature, General, Death/Psychology, (Technique)
1: Nature Answer the question!
Intro: Hook. Refer question. Aspects of question/theme (little nature, bio, technique, science, shadow).
Body 1: Hope. Metaphor for hope, but sharp observation . diction (perches), storm
Body 2: Bird Body 3: Bee Body 4: Snake Conclusion/5: connect to darker ‘nature’ , deeper poems…
Points/Aspects for Nature Essay:
1) Biography- homebody, Amherst, garden variety (contrast w/ grand Romantics)
2) Accurate description: science, witty, realistic
3) Anthropomorphism: animals as humans, Disney, also symbolism
4) Hint at the dark side?
Intro: Hook. Restate question. List aspects of theme and poems. Map to your essay.
1) ED is a close observer of nature and her typically idiosyncratic description and analysis of natural
phenomena brings a freshness to an otherwise solemn body of work.
A) Her chosen lifestyle led her to be limited to the ‘garden variety’ of nature but her studies and
interest in science combined with her precocious poetic technique enable her to depict nature with a
rare clarity and significance. In her poems …
Snake, Bird, Liquor and a few of her darker poems which have significant metaphorical use of nature.
B) We have all been witness to the wonder of nature in our own backyards. ED explores this smaller, more
accessible side of nature in ‘Bird’. The easy-going tone of the opening lines let us know that this is not going
to be one of those deep trawling of ED’s dark psyche: ‘A bird came down the walk… And ate the fellow, raw.”
This is an everyday experience and even the reference to the bird’s natural predatory instincts is light-hearted,
an afterthought.” ……..The poem shifts in the last stanza as ED’s masterful poetic technique beautifully
captures the grace and power of even this smallest manifestation of nature in an extended simile: ‘Than oars
divide the Ocean’.
Dickinson’s exploration of nature may be considered too cute or Disney-like, but her technique and precise
observation leads to deeper truths….. Perhaps she is more at home with ‘Nature’s people’ than her own
humankind (bio)….’zero to the bone’ captures perfectly the power of even the garden variety of nature can
transfix us and perhaps even scare…
‘I taste’ is full of expertly rendered imagery from nature… behaviour (science)…leaning against the sun
(afterlife? Agnosticism? Pantheism?)
Nearly every poet uses nature, but ED does it a way that is fresh and relatable.
Her nature is the one I can find myself in my own back garden…
The images and comparisons which ED uses to describe nature…
Not Disney, scientifically apt….
More Possible Nature Questions:
1. “ED is a close observer of nature and her typically idiosyncratic description and analysis of natural
phenomena bring a freshness to an otherwise solemn body of work”. Discuss.
2. ‘Emily Dickinson writes about nature in several of her poems, but she does it in a refreshingly original
way.’
Discuss with reference to the poetry.
3. Discuss ED’s approach to nature in her poetry.
4. ED’s use of language and imagery make nature come alive for the reader.
Refer to the poems which you have studied in your answer.
l- refer to ED’s use of language: aspects? accurate, quirky description, sound effects,
a- Personal Response: ‘I really smell, see, hear nature in her poetry
i-images are original, evocative, realistic, similes/metaphors
5. ED’s engaging use of nature lightens the dark thematic content of her poetry.
Refer to the poems which you have studied in your answer.
engaging: Hope, Bird, Liquor: garden, small n, Disney but real, lightens dark:
t
6. ED’s echnical poetic expertise makes
nature come alive for the readers and often enables them to
t
engage more fully with her hemes.
Brainstorm: language: meter-hymn, rhyme (off), diction (eccentric, scientific, precise)
sound: rhythm, alliteration, onomatopoeia, sibilance
imagery: metaphors, similes (figurative language), symbols, synaesthesia
Bird (garden, Disney, profound) Hope: symbol, conceit, description,
Snake: sound, imagery, complex,
Fly/Soul:/Funeral/: nature used to convey theme
Intro: Hook. Restate. Aspects. Plan.
Body: Bird: Topic sentence (refer to Q). Proof/Quotes. Concluding sentence (refer to Q).
Many poets have written about nature, but few have written with such a unique style or depth of meaning
and conveyed experience than ED. Her expert poetic technique brings nature alive and not only do we
feel that we are in the garden with her, we also gain a deeper insight into the underlying theme.
Sample Body Paragraphs:
‘Bird’ is a typical nature poem by ED and perhaps we should use ‘nature’ with a small ‘n’ because, unlike
some of the Romantics, she writes of the ‘garden variety’ of nature: here she provides a close and witty
observation of a typical garden songbird’s perambulation...“And ate the fellow raw” : Here the darker
side of nature is only hinted at, as the carnivorous habits of the bird are playfully alluded to and deflated
by her inclusion of the friendly moniker ‘fellow’.
Snake: This cheerful tone shifts in the last stanza. The speaker refers to ‘a tighter breathing’
which accompanies the sight of a snake. For the first time, we get a sense of the more
traditional connotations of snakes: excitement bordering on fear and maybe loathing. Yet,
Dickinson ends the poem abruptly, mimicking the sudden loss of breath of an unexpected
experience. The snake does not scare her after all: it gives her a small moment of adrenalin
and perhaps ‘transport’ or transcendence.
Soul. Once again there’s an interest in the little creatures (“Nature’s People” from A Narrow Fellow in the
grass). The “Bee” is used as a metaphor (as were the butterflies in A Bird Came down the walk).
Body Paragraph 2: Snake further illustrates ED’s unique poetical grasp of the natural world.
Her assumed persona of a young boy describing the common yet always exhilarating appearance of a
garden variety snake.
Theme 2: 5D’S: Death/Depression/Darkness/’da Afterlife/ d’religion
1) Death and psychological issues are the dominant themes of several of ED’s darker poems. Discuss how
she deals with these themes innovatively.
2) Dickinson’s poetry is compelling for both its dark psychological content and its innovative techniques.
(Aspects) Death- moment of death; after-life; personal/irreverent
Psych- manic-depressive; surprisingly modern personality;
Personal Response:
Dickinson vividly explores the ever present theme of imminent death in this poem, creating images which
convey the fright and wonder of a moment which awaits us all.
language: meter-hymn, rhyme (off), diction (eccentric, scientific, precise)
sound: rhythm, alliteration, onomatopoeia, sibilance
imagery: metaphors, similes (figurative language), symbols, synaesthesia
Bird (garden, Disney, profound) Hope: symbol, conceit, description,
Light, Funeral, Fly, Pain, Soul BS: Religion/doubt, depression, description, ambiguity
(Hook) The best/most memorable poetry makes us think deeply, but not always about the nicest things. ED has
her ‘fun’ nature poems, but some of her strongest poems, in particular Light, Funeral, Fly and Pain, force the
reader to confront the ‘big questions’ regarding life, death and sanity. She approaches these universal themes
with her typically eccentric but effective style, including highly original diction, punctuation and perspective.
She probes and suggests much, but provides no simple answers, as she makes us think and wonder about the
meanings of life and death.
Whereas most people might think a blast of intense sunlight in the depths of winter as refreshing, ED
compares it with ‘the heft of Cathedral tunes’. Does this mean that religious music, even religion itself, is
oppressive? ED, writing from a conservative Calvinist community, is ahead of time here. Not many of her
contemporaries would have made this connection: even our agnostic age finds music as the most tolerable of
religious affectations. Interestingly, ED’s own poetry often follows the rhythm of the typical hymn… The ‘look
of death’ brings the poem to a new level: ED is not necessarily depressed personally but perhaps suffers more
of a philosophical melancholy: Is she an early existentialist? We all know the eerie feeling of the car crash
moment: ‘landscape listens’
In ‘Formal’ ED seems to have come to some sort of solution for her mental issues if not her existential ones…
Again, there are references to religion, but ED’s analysis pushes into modern psychology…
3) Variations of a general question: suitable for LC; letter to her; presenting award; introduction/pick
poems
BS: Aspects: bio, portrays nature, deals with dark matter, fresh/funky style, before her time: technique
Poems: Narrow, Bird, Felt, Formal, Jewels
Appropriate/suitable/fitting/deserving
4Ds:
…
‘Pain’ reads remarkably like an account of a modern day counselling session. ED may have written a century
and a half ago, but her step-by-step, blow-by-blow account of psychological trauma and recovery is incredibly
applicable to our own lives.
First: Hook: The fact that ED wrote back in the 1870s a yet modern readers still can find her interesting , makes
her especially suitable. Too many times poets fall between being too outdated on one hand and too earnestly
‘down with the kids’ on the other: ED manages to speak to us clearly, yet from a respectable distance, too.
Second sentence:
I find that her precise poetic techniques are put to such contrasting purposes, from the
delightful engagement with nature to the profound questionings of
our very existence, that we always can find
something …
Name
ED Review Worksheet
Give short, ‘potted’ summaries of each poem and then link with themes through quote and comment.
Themes: Nature, Death/Afterlife,-Psychology/Depression, Technique, Biography
Poem:
A Bird came down the Walk
Summary: ‘Bird’ is a typical Nature poem by ED and perhaps we should use ‘nature’ with a small ‘n’ because,
unlike some of the Romantics who write of impressive spectacles such as Mount Blanc, she writes of the ‘garden
variety’ of nature: here she provides a close and witty observation of a typical garden songbird’s perambulation.
‘Bird’ also gives us a glimpse into Bio and Psych., as she seems more at ease with garden wildlife than human
society.
Quotes/Links: 1) “And ate the fellow- raw” : Here the darker side of nature is only hinted at, as the carnivorous
habits of the bird are playfully alluded to and deflated by her inclusion of the friendly moniker ‘fellow’.
2) “Too silver for a seam” Exquisite poetic craft with a sustained metaphor and sibilance…
3) ‘He stirred his velvet head’
Velvet is a metaphoric description which typifies ED’s close observation of
nature and her exquisite diction…sensory mixing-feel and sight of velvet…
also shows a shift into a deeper more
profound treatment of nature…
Poem: I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
Summary: The speaker macabrely describes a funeral which she may be observing but also ‘feels’ in her
brain. Ambiguity: Death or mental breakdown (death of sanity)? Then, she narrates a rather harrowing
account of the funeral but also the sensory experience of her breakdown.
Quotes/Links: 1)
‘Felt’: Not saw, not heard, but emotionally experienced (contrast with clinical Pain)
2) ‘treading…beating…drum’: onomatopoeic conveys the feelings of claustrophobia, panic and doom which
the speaker is feeling…rhythm ; repetition, alliteration
3) ‘creak across my soul’ onom. also: sensory mix (synaesthesia) vibrantly captures the experience…
illogical: How does something ‘creak’ across the soul? metaphoricish
4) Being an Ear? sensory overload
5) And Finished knowing- then- The big dash: Ambiguous: Death? After-life? Sleep? Recovery?
The end of ‘Funeral’ epitomises ED’s use of revolutionary punctuation and her powerfully
epigrammatic syntax: ‘-then-‘. The dashes encourage the reader to think deeply and the last one suggests a lack of
certainty about the afterlife. And how much meaning can one pack into a four letter word? Then…what?
Exactly! Not only is ED suffering a psychological death, she is wondering if the the physical one also extinguishes
the soul.
Poem:
Summary:
I taste..
One of ED’s more light-heated and upbeat poems: The speaker describes the intoxicating effect
of summer, nature, and maybe life in general. There is a sustained metaphor of drunkenness throughout the poem
as she delicately but exuberantly compares her joy de vie with the effects of alcohol. The charming images get less
Disney-like and more Burtonesque as there seems to be a depiction of the after-life.
Quotes/Links: 1) ‘liquor never brewed’: paradoxical metaphor emphasises the intensity of her joy in summer-time
and marks this poem as one of her upbeat/lighter ones
2) ‘I shall but drink the more!’ Typical archaic exuberant diction and syntax! But when she comes down?
3) debauchee of dew: alliteration and diction, humorous,
4) ‘saints to windows’ sound, deepening of meaning? after-life?
Poem:
‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’
Summary: One of ED’s darker poems, but implies possibility of recovery. Speaker describes the process of being
hurt, stunned and then partially recovering. Grief? Depression? Mental Illness? ED’s tone is rather detached,
almost like a formal diagnosis, but her metaphors and imagery expertly capture an experience shared at least once
by all.
Quotes/Links: 1) No Capitals in the First line/title?
conspicuous by their absence: calmer?
2) ‘great’ ‘formal’: diction: Great is a very normal unemotive word, connoting size not quality…
‘formal’ also conveys a calmness, contrasts to frenetic Funeral and Fly; alliteration: easy to swallow
3) ‘like a stone’ ‘hour of lead’
Figurative language: simile- captures the tightness of emotional denial
metaphor is stronger: no ‘like’ Lead is
almost onomatopoeic, but the monosyllabic weight of the word conveys the depth of the numbness
4) Quartz contentment: sound, repeated consonant sounds, neat clean, impregnable
‘if’ does everyone survive emotionally? Did she survive?
‘the letting go’ compared with end of Fly, Funeral: death? recovery? ambivalent (both) /ambiguous (not clear)
Themes: Nature, Death/Afterlife, Psychology/Depression, Technique, Biography
Poem:
Jewells
Quotes/Links:. The tone of this poem shifts: At first, it is almost bombastic in its enthusiastic,
extravagant registry/catalogue of exotic and expensive gifts. We quickly realise
that the normally shy speaker of ED’s poetry is engaging in a bit of hyperbole. The
shift in tone in line 6 is a change back to the voice we know as Dickinson’s: intelligent,
subtle yet confident.
1) Three people involved?
I, you and he:
I is ED/Speaker: She seems to be in a playful, romantic mood.
You is her lover? Her friend? Her Mr. Grey?
He is some traditional ‘Bobadilo’: a stereotypical paramour
2) exotic places in poem:
St. Domingo: in the DR, known for its tropical lushnessVera Cruz: the same, in Mexico: exotic, even
dangerousBahamas
3) exotic, sensuous, sensual words in poem:
Jewels, odors, blaze, berries, flicker, swing,
4) your phrases to capture such exoticism
“ED here evokes the exotic romanticism of the Caribbean to set the stage for her more humble, more domestic gift
of a single blazing flower/poppy”
Poem:
Hope
Quotes/Links: 1) “And sings the tune without the words”
This line captures the theme of ‘Hope’: The speaker is referring to the constant presence of ‘hope’ in her life, as
personified by the songbird. Dickinson’s unusual use of the dash also comes to the fore here, and may hint at a
deeper meaning: maybe the ‘at all’ as an afterthought conveys a lingering sense of doubt. We also can glean some
biographical relevance: she has suffered ‘stoms’ yet she remains hopeful, or at least is telling herself so.
Poem:
Slant
Quotes/Links: 1) “like the heft of Cathedral Tunes”
From “Slant”. Here Dickinson uses an unusual simile to convey the pressing weight which she finds to accompany
certain slants of light. Church organ music like Bach is often ‘heavy’ but to associate it with an oppressive or
depressive experience is quite radical for the more-or-less faithful age in which ED lived and wrote..Dickinson’s
light but sure touch with rhyme shines through here: noons/tunes are almost perfect but heft/light are borderline
non-rhymes. The variety of rhyme gives the poem flow without the boredom and singsongish effect of a regular
scheme.
Sample Essay Start What impact did the poetry of Emily Dickinson make on you as a reader?
Despite Emily Dickinson’s poetry originating centuries before my time, I found her poetry relevant and topical. It
deals with issues that I can relate and respond to, such as the fragility of human nature and the enigmatic state of
nature. The style of this poetry is unique and vibrant, using imagery and simile to communicate such messages,
which allows myself, not as attuned to poetry as previous generations, to still explore such issues. Some Dickinson
poems in which the above can be seen are A BIRD CAME DOWN THE WALK, AFTER GREAT PAIN, A
FORMAL FEELING COMES, I FELT A FUNERAL, IN MY BRAIN, I TASTE A LIQUOR NEVER BREWED,
HOPE IS A THING WITH FEATHERS, I HEARD A FLY BUZZ – WHEN I DIED, A NARROW FELLOW IN
THE GRASS and THE SOUL HAS BANDAGED MOMENTS.
In much of her poetry, Dickinson deals with the exploration of her inner self, which reveals the various troubling
issues for one’s inner psyche such as as psychological and physical frailty. Such themes are relevant to me as these
are issues which affect everyone, but perhaps are even more significant to a current audience than I am part of than
they were to Dickinson’s contemporaries as today’s audience, such as myself, have a greater awareness and sense
of these issues, due to the heightened focus on and raised awareness of issues such as depression.
I Felt, a Funeral, in my Brain is about the speaker’s descent into madness, a topic which I aware of, despite not
having experienced any similar states, due to the increasingly growing awareness of today's world into such issues
as individuals grow more and more awareness of their psyche and its fragility, as increased medical advances are
being made in such areas. Dickinson uses a metaphor, of a funeral, to indicate how her sanity is dying (the use of
‘Brain’, introduced in the first line ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, is clever because it applies to not only physical
but psychological decline, which are both linked here – psychological decline leads to physical stress and strain).
No other is present here – indeed even the various contributants to this decline into madness are presented very
generally, as ‘Mourners’ who are ‘treading’ and later only as ‘Boots of Lead’. The inner self is endangered in
another Dickinson poem, There’s a certain slant of light, where Dickinson here is concerned with the decline of the
self due to the harsh and cruel ways of a material world, a problem which today’s audience can relate to, as
materialism overshadows much if not all else in their world, seen with the simultaneous decline in such values as
religion as generosity. This material world is epitomized in the transformation of religion, which is represented
only by ‘the heft/ Of cathedral tunes’ – here not even religion, the conventionally-thoughgt ultimate source of
strength, is of any benefit, as it too now belongs to the physical world. The result is ‘Heavenly hurt’ and even
though Dickinson remarks that ‘We can find no scar’, she reminds us that the material world provides ‘internal
difference/ Where the meanings, are’ to the self that inhabits each world. The haunting message is that the material
world in which one inhabits is slowly taking control of such non-material elements as religion, the very elements
of one’s world which provide guidance and knowledge – without these, one cannot make sense of one’s
surroundings, and without ‘meanings’, can only have ‘internal difference’, a message which, as said, is very
relevant to today’s world. Elsewhere, in The Soul has Bandaged moments, Dickinson explores the various
contrasting states of the soul and in doing so reveals how everlasting happiness and contentment is impossible – a
timeless message. She reveals how the soul can at times experience extreme joy, and ‘dances like a Bomb, abroad,/
And swings upon the Hours’. However the poet admits that this is only when it has ‘moments of Escape’ from the
‘retaken moments’ when it is trapped by sadness, depression and despair and takes the role of ‘Felon’ and is ‘led
along,/ With shackles on the plumed feet,/ And staples, in the Song’.
Another message in Dickinson’s poetry that Icould relate to is the varied state of nature. In her poems Dickinson
presents nature as that which can be joyful but can change in an instant – a message which I may be more aware of
than Dickinson’s fellows, as in today's world our generation is continuously taking greater control of nature with
widespread zoos, safaris etc, and simultaneously gaining a heightened knowledge of it, such as how nature reacts
to humans.
Dickinson’s poem A bird came down the walk epitomizes a fundamental problem that many have with human
relationship’s to and control of nature – that animals fear humans and should not be kept prisoner by humankind. I
know this has become especially relevant with the recent growth of animal-friendly groups such as PETA, which I
see and hear of in the news, and I was able to spot the non-harmonious nature of humankind and nature in
Dickinson's poetry such as this, and establish a link. The bird in the poem is initially presented in pleasant terms, as
he acts freely and naturally as he is unaware he is being spied on: as Dickinson admits, ‘He did not know I saw’.
We see how he ‘bit an angle-worm in halves/ And ate the fellow, raw’ and elsewhere ‘he drank a dew/ From a
convenient grass’ and ‘hopped sidewise to the wall/ To let a beetle pass.’ However these pleasantries soon
evaporate, as the bird becomes aware of the spier and ‘glanced with rapid eyes’ that ‘looked like frightened beads’.
Even though Dickinson is ‘cautious’ and ‘Like one in danger’, the bird ‘unrolled his feathers/ And rowed him
softer home’. Dickinson’s poetry even appears to warn against such a relationship, reminding of the danger
animals possess, and
perhaps a Planet of the Apes scenario(!). In A narrow Fellow in the grass there is a suggestion throughout the poem
of some affinity with the snake – the poet says ‘You may have met him’ and it can be presumed that the snake can
be included as ‘Several of nature’s people/ I know’, which may be a meaningful attempt at connecetion. However
in the final stanza when it is spoken off the speaker appears fearful, and when the snake is seen it brings about
‘tighter breathing/ And zero at the bone’ – the mention of ‘alone’ seems to suggest that the snake has the potential
to be deadly, which may be a natural reaction to mistreatment, or an attempt to protect itself. Elsewhere, in I heard
a Fly buzz – when I died, the fly can be seen as representative once more of the danger nature can pose to
humankind. Initially the fly holds no source of discomfort – even when the speaker reveals that ‘I heard a fly buzz
when I died’ the fly is not even seen as an annoyance, as is conventionally thought. Even with its buzz there was
still ‘stillness’. However as the poem nears its end the fly’s presence heightens as suddenly ‘There interposed a fly’
and it comes ‘Between the light’ and the speaker with the result that the speaker’ could not see to see.’…
Big 3 Potential Qs!
1. ‘Emily Dickinson writes about nature in several of her poems, but she does it in a refreshingly original way.’
Discuss with reference to the poetry.
2. ‘Emily Dickinson does not shy away from the big issues such as death and mental illness, and her innovative
technique makes her explorations thought-provoking and even startling.’
Discuss with reference to the poetry.
3. Write the Introduction to the Emily Dickinson section of your Poetry Textbook, explaining why You have
included her, and which Poems you have Chosen.
Elizabeth Bishop
Past Questions and MS
2013
2009
2006
2002
2001
Potential Bishop Questions:
1. “Elizabeth Bishop deals with universal themes in a subtle but compelling manner as she applies her language
and imagery with such exquisite technique.” Discuss with reference to the poetry.
2. “Elizabeth Bishop explores the common theme of childhood (her own biography) in her poetry, but does so
with a rare combination of both subtlety and penetrating insight.” Discuss. (C, S, I)
3. “Through Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry we get a strong sense of place as well as an exploration of the theme of
travel.” Discuss. (P,T, )
4. Write a letter to Elizabeth Bishop, explaining what her poetry means to you. (L, , ,)
5. “Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry often explores a certain place, but this exploration also leads to insight into her
personal life.” Discuss with reference to the poetry.
6. ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s special allure is that she writes about important personal themes but does with subtlety and
impressive technique.’ Discuss with reference to the poetry.
7. Write a letter to Elizabeth Bishop, explaining what her poetry means to you.
8. “Elizabeth Bishop explores her own life experiences in her poetry, but she does so with a rare combination of
both subtlety and penetrating insight.” Discuss. le, s, p
9. “Through Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry we get a strong sense of place as well as an exploration of the theme of
travel.” Discuss. sp, t, te
10. Write an introduction to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, explaining why it is suitable for the Leaving
Certificate. LC, S: your chosen aspects! I, I, r
How to plan and write a poetry essay.
2) Analyse and Code Question 2) Decide on aspects of question you will discuss 3) Pick poems/quotes which
prove aspects 4) Plot essay structure 5) Write intro (Hook. Restatement of question. Aspects and poems.)
Structure:
a)Thematic
Par2-3:Imagery(3poems)Par4-5:childhood(3poems)Par6:Travel(2)
b)bypoem
Par2:(1)Startwithreftoquestion(subtly/similaicallyifpossible)
(2-5)Refertoaspectsofthemeandprovewithquotesandanalysis.
(6)Wrapupbyreturningtoquestion/theme.
Par3:(1)seguetopoem2withreftoquestion(2-5)refertodifferent/sameaspectsandprove….(6)Wrap,
return,suggest…
Question:
‘EB’s special allure is that she writes about important personal themes but does with
subtlety and impressive technique.
Code: SA-PT-S-TC
PT- Place, biography, S-Filling Station, Sestina, Prodigal, TC- imagery, description, diction
Sestina, Prodigal, Questions, Filling Station
Intro:
(Hook) Bishop never shouts at us: she whispers, and we listen. (Question) Her poetry deals with
themes important to us all such as our (aspects) childhood memories and our search for home but it is her subtly
effective poetic technique which makes her a special poet. I will trace her exploration of these themes and her use
of (aspects) detailed description and variety of diction in Sestina, Prodigal….
Sample Introductory Paragraph, which shows ‘personal response’:
Elizabeth Bishop is not the most famous of the poets on our course: She is not the all mighty cultural institution
which is Yeats or the enshrined icon of tortured genius which is Plath. Bishop is known as a “poet’s poet”: a
professional who earned the respect of peers and critics slowly and surely but never courted or earned massive
popularity, and frankly I approached her poetry sceptically, not being a critic or peer, and barely having heard of
her! And to be honest, at first I was mystified by her inclusion on the course; her poems were well written but
nothing wowed me or inspired enthusiasm. It was only with careful re-readings and a slow immersion into her
pace and style that I came to appreciate her unique talent. Bishop’s subtlety demands time and concentration, but
if the reader is adept there is ample reward as we are beguiled by her almost painterly skills of description and her
highly sensitive and nuanced evocation of childhood and the mature deliberation of a reserved but highly
personalized philosophy. I will trace her troublesome childhood in ‘First Death’ and ‘Sestina’ and explore her
theme of travel in ‘Questions’ and ‘Armadillo’ and find echoes of both in ‘Filling Station’.
More specific ‘thematic’ question:
Describe how Bishop often explores a sense of place through her poetry.
Find ‘aspects’ of theme: 1) childhood home (or lack thereof) 2) travel to find a home 3) place=people
Intro: 1) HOOK. 2) Rephrase Question 3) pick aspects 4) pick poems
Bishop Themes:
1. Childhood/Biography/Memory/Personal
Childhood is presented as a precious entity which is threatened by external factors. The innocence of childhood is
threatened by Death in “ First Death in Nova Scotia” and “ Sestina”
and by the child’s realisation that she is not the centre of the Universe but a small part of the human race in
“In the waiting room”. One of the Fishies. The inspiration for these poems can be found in Bishop’s own
childhood which was defined by isolation. Her Father died when she was only eight months old and her Mother
went insane with grief, being institutionalised when her daughter was five years old. Bishop was raised by various
family members and, as a result, never felt that there was a place she could call home. Her happiest childhood days
were spent under the care of her Maternal grandmother at Great village, Nova Scotia and many of the places
described by Bishop in her poems reflect various aspects of this idyllic place.
More general biography: Prodigal, Questions, Armadillo, The Filling Station..
Technique on theme: subtle not confessional, mixed pov (child/adult), diction (heightened/colloquial)
Introspection through extrospection,
2. Sense of Place/Travel/Cultural differences
In many ways, Bishop fulfils the modern American poet’s search for what William Carlos Williams called “a
sense of place”. Like he, her poems often describe the significance of a speaker’s experience of a place, while
defining some particular aspect of existence in the process. This search for communion with a
place obviously has its roots in Bishop’s own life. Her childhood was defined by instability as she was shunted
from one relative to another after her Mother’s committal. Many of the Titles of her poems tell us
where the speaker is and describe the action which surrounds them as they try to come to terms with this place. She
referred to the capacity of places to allow us to access a deeper understanding of ourselves
through contemplation. These places were called “Geographical mirrors”.
At the Fish-houses, Questions, Armadillo, Waiting Room, Bight, Filling Station
3. Style/Technique:
Observation – probing – meditation – revelation/insight/epiphany: see ‘The Fish’ and ‘Filling Station’
Introspection through extrospection!, multi-sensory, details!
Pays attention to the insignificant, making it relevant: see all of them!
Finds truth, beauty and meaning in the unexpected and insignificant: big ugly fish anyone? Or noisy wooden
clogs? Deeper significance.
Insightful on a public, universal level: ‘Somebody loves us all’ Truisms and aphorisms, even clichés but she earns
them through setting a base…the material to the philosophical!
Honest and aware in relation to her self: ‘He hid the pints behind a two-by-four)
Undercuts persona (Filling Station)
Personal experience informs her work much more than spiritual, metaphysical, political or intellectual influence, yet
her contemplation of her experience leads her to greater insight (rainbow!)
Attention to detail
Subjective descriptions – see domestic imagery in ‘The Fish’ ‘she’ or ‘I’
Deliberately off-hand, casual tone (colloquial) but mixed with more heightened, poetic language
Often humorous or whimsical, ironic: ‘or oils it, maybe’ self-deprecating
Masterful control of meter: double sonnets, for example (formal and free)
Subtle use of sound effects (alliteration, sibilance, cacophony) onomatopoeia
4. General/Response/Other
letter to Bishop; speech at award ceremony; choose poems for anthology, suitable for modern/LC
audience; feelings/appeal….
Give short, ‘potted’ summaries of each poem and then link with themes through quote and comment.
Poem:
The Fish
Summary: This narrative poem describes, with a perceptive eye, the speaker’s epiphanic experience of catching and
letting go a fish and gaining a new insight into nature and the nature of beauty.
Quotes/Links to Question Type: 1) (T) ‘I caught a tremendous fish’: Opening line typifies Bishop’s use of
colloquial, prosaic diction and syntax, setting a realistic scene.
2)
‘ancient wallpaper’ What an unusual but effective simile! I remember my granny’s hallway wallpaper
and the way its slow descent into decrepitude was mirrored in the lines on her face.
3)
4) Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow: (T) The triumphant epiphanic moment contrasts with more prosaic lines:earned!
Poem:
At the Fish-houses
Summary:
Quotes/Links: 1) “old man accepts a Lucky Strike”- (T)- colloquial/details (B/C) memory of wholesome past
(P/T) people in the place
‘cold hard mouth of the world’- (T) philosophical metaphor but grounded in realistic description
(P/T) This place makes her think… (B/C) life (her) gets tougher, like nature..
3)
2)
Poem:
Summary:
Sestina
Sestina explores Bishop’s memories of childhood grief using an arcane format which somehow
perfectly conveys the…using pov, diction, metaphor….
Quotes/Links: 1) ‘Sestina’ offers us a penetrating insight into one particular moment from EB’s childhood…
2) When the speaker states that the grandmother ‘hangs up the clever almanac’ we sense EB is intentionally
parroting the diction and syntax of a child who is in turn parroting an adult’s. The grandmother has previously
called the almanac clever, and now that is its epithet.
3) ‘Time to plant tears says the almanac’ captures both the confused state of the child Elizabeth and the
retrospective philosophy of the adult poet. Again, we get a glimpse of EB’s personal life but it is through a
generalising lens. We also are that child, trying to come to terms with the death of our dog or the separation of our
parents.
4)
Poem:
Questions of Travel
Summary:
Quotes/Links: 1) ‘There are too many waterfalls here!’ captures EB’s ambivalent attitude towards travel. We
have already seen that she does enjoy the scenery and culture, but she is also aware of the innate hypocrisy of the
tourist’s
position. Perhaps she is mocking a less aware American tourist here, but she is big enough to admit that
she has misgivings about her own travel.
of the traveler’s greed and selfishness…
2)
Obviously, there are not too many waterfalls- it is just a statement
Bishop Quotations
Identify: a) poem b) interpretation c) connection with theme and/or technique.!
1. untileverything/wasrainbow,rainbow,rainbow!
2. Click.Click.Goesthedredge,/andbringsupadrippingjawfulofmarl.
3. Hewasafriendofmygrandfather.
4. thesunriseglazedthebarnyardmudwithred/theburningpuddlesseemedtoreassure.
5. Shouldwehavestayedathomeandthoughtofhere?
6. Sosoft!-ahandfulofintangibleash
7. It'stimeforteanow;butthechild/iswatchingtheteakettle'ssmallhardtears
8. Arthur'scoffinwas/alittlefrostedcake…
9. Whytheextraneousplant? Sample‘PersonalResponseEssay’-FoundonInternet(Notmine!)
ThepoetrybyElizabethBishopthatIhavestudiediscomplex,honest,andengaging.Herstyleisaccomplishedyetsubtle
enoughtoconveythestrengthofheremotionsinamannerthatneverseemscontrived.Ithinkthatshecommunicatestoa
modernaudienceinagenuinelymemorablefashion.T.S.Eliotoncesaidthatgenuinepoetrycancommunicatebeforeitis
understood.IfeelthatthisistrueofBishop’spoetry.
IfoundBishop’streatmentofchildhooddeeplymovingandoftenpoignant.FromthelittlethatIhavereadaboutherlife,itis
apparenttomethatherearlyyearsweretroubled.Thisisreflectedinherpoetry.Theoverwhelmingfeelingthatanyreaderof
Bishop’schildhoodpoemsencountersisthatBishop’searlyyearsleftalegacyoflossandpain.Nowhereisthismoreobvious
thaninthepoem,“Sestina”.
Here,thepredominantatmosphereisoneofloneliness.TheSeptemberraincombineswiththe“failinglight”andthe
grandmother’s“tears”tocreateamemorableevocationofBishop’schildhood.However,inamannertypicalofBishop’sstyle,
thestrictuseofthesestinaformpreventsthepoemfrombecomingtoosentimental.Atitsheart,“Sestina”containsa
powerfulmessage(onefoundelsewhereinBishop’spoetry)concerningthenotionofidentity.Thechildhoodmemories
evokedinthispoemservetohighlightBishop’sdifficultywiththeconceptofhome.The“childdrawsanotherinscrutable
house”,thepicturecontainsamansheddingtearsandthereisanoticeableabsenceofamotherfigure.
Similarly,in“FirstDeathinNovaScotia”,Bishop’schildoodmemoriesarepainful.Inthiscase,theycentreuponthedeathof
herlittlecousin,Arthur.Where“Sestina”omitsamotherfigure,“FirstDeathinNovaScotia”linksthemothertothechild’s
firstencounterwithdeath.ThereisarestrainedsimplicityinthelanguageusedbyBishop.Welearnthat“Arthurwasvery
small,”“hewasallwhitelikeadoll”and“JackFrosthadlefthimwhiteforever.”Inkeepingwiththeemptinesswefindin
“Sestina,”Bishoprefusestoprovideanycomfortforthechild.Whilethisisagenuinelysadpoemtoread,Iwasalsostruckby
thelackofconventionaltheology.Thefactthatthepoemfailstoofferusthecomfortofanafterlifemakesitmoredifficultto
accept.Arthurisnotinvitedtoheavenratherto“court.”
AlthoughBishop’schildhoodmemoriesarepainfulinthemselves,thepoetalsodoesanexcellentjobofpresentinguswiththe
impactthathertroubledformativeyearshadonheradultlife.InBishop’spoetrythereisaveryrealtensionbetweentheneed
toreturntochildhoodandtheneedtoescapefromit.“TheWaitingRoom”and“AttheFishHouses”depictthistension.
However,giventhecontextofBishop’slife,Ifeelthat“TheProdigal”bestexemplifiestheimpactherunhappychildhoodhad
onheradultlife.
Obviously,thispoemisnotautobiographical,butthetendernessandempathythatBishopshowstowardsthealcoholicswine
herdaredeeplymoving.Thisisanotherpoemthatcentresontheideaofhome.Thesqualorandfilthoftheswineherd’s
existencearepalpable.Inthepoem,welearnthatthe“brownenormousodourhelivedbywastoocloseforhimtojudge”.
Despitetheawfulrealityofhisexistence,theswineherdiscapableofbeautifulinsights.Thereisanendearingqualitytothe
mannerinwhichthe“pigs[stick]outtheirlittlefeet”andsnore.Thefinallinesofthispoemaregenuinelytouching,especially
whenoneconsidersBishop’snomadicexistence:
Ittookhimalongtimefinallytomakeuphismindandgohome.
Onceagain,IwasstruckbyBishop’scontroloffeelinginthispoem.Asin“Sestina”,shereliesontightstructure(thistimethe
sonnetform)toachieveapowerfulyetrestrainedmessage.
It’snowonder,giventhetroublednatureofBishop’schildhoodandhersenseofdislocationasanadult,thatshespentso
muchtimeinquiringintothenatureofidentity.Veryoften,asin“QuestionsofTravel”theideaofthejourneybecomesa
metaphorfortheexplorationoftheself.Theobservationsofnatureandthenaturalworldinthispoemareveryinteresting.
Thereaderispresentedwithimagesof“crowdedstreams”,“trees”,“thefatbrownbird”,and“onemorefoldedsunset”.
However,thepoetveryquicklygoesbeyondthepostcardimage,inordertoacknowledgetheintrinsicvalueoftravel.For
Bishop,travelinvolvesexplorationandthisexplorationis,inherestimation,“partofwhatitistobehuman”.Shebelievesthat
wearedeterminedto“rushtoseethesuntheotherwayround”.Sheevengoessofarastosaythatsuchtravelyields
powerfulinsightsintothehumancondition.
Inthefinaltwostanzasofthepoem,setoffinItalics,Bishopreachesaprofoundconclusion.ShedismissesPascal’sideasabout
travelandfinallysheclaimsthatthechoiceaboutwhoweareisinrealitynevermadefreely:
Continent,city,country,society,
thechoiceisneverwideandneverfree.
HereBishopexaminesinasimpleandstraightforwardmannersomeverydifficultconcepts.Ifindthefinaltwolinesofthe
poemverypoignantwhenconsideredinthecontextofBishop’snomadiclife.Theideathatsheshouldfindtheideaof“home”
perplexingisverymoving.
Bishop’spoemsdonotmerelyconfinethemselvestoexplorationsofselfandidentity.Sheisalsoaskilledobserver.Oneofthe
mostinterestingtechniquesthatBishopemploysishertendencytomakethefamiliarlookstrange.Inthisrespect,sheoften
employsstrangeandunusualsimiles.
In“AtTheFishhouses,”thedetaileddescriptionofthefishhousesandthemicroscopicexaminationofthe“wheelbarrow”,
“theoldman’shand”andthe“capstan”suddenlygivewaytoastrange,almostunrecognisableplace.Thebeautiful“surfaceof
thesea”becomes,inthefinalsectionofthepoem,likewhat“weimagineknowledgetobe”.Itis“dark,salty,clear,moving,
utterlyfreedrawnfromthecoldhardmouthoftheworld.”Thefamiliarhasbecomealmostsurreal.
Similarly,in“TheFish”wewitnessanothersuchtransformation.The“tremendousfish”thatwasbatteredandvenerableis
releasedandthefamiliarworldofthefishingboatistransformeduntilbecomes“rainbow,rainbow,rainbow.”“InTheFilling
Station”,thedetailed,almostphotographicdescriptionofthe“oilsoaked,oilpermeated”“littlefillingstation”giveswaytoa
completelydifferentviewpoint.Suddenly,inthefinallinesofthepoemthestationbecomessymbolicofthefactthatsomeone
lovesusall.
IhavetoadmittofindingBishop’spoetrychallenging.Comparedtomanyoftheotherpoetsonthecourse,whichIfound
accessibleonafirstreading,manyofBishop’spoemswereperplexing.However,IhonestlyfeelthatBishoprewardsthe
readers’efforts.Herkeeneyefordetail,herrestrained,yetdeeplyemotionalpoemsandhermasteryofformdeserveour
attentionandadmiration.IstronglyrecommendthateveryonereadatleastonepoembyElizabethBishop.
Name
Bishop: ‘The Fish’
1. List three phrases which create the image of the fish in the reader’s mind. Comment on the diction.
grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely
unexpected diction…’grunting’ ..venerable ..usually describes people..war heros…homely—more often for
people…
2. What is the speaker’s tone, or attitude toward the fish? Does it change? Give 3 specific lines that indicate this.
The tone shifts…from a bemused detachment (guilt?) a bit surprised…
Then growing admiration…
Ending in triumphant empathy…
3. Find three similes used in this poem. Explain what two things are being compared in each one and what the
simile is trying to express.
like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses
Bishop uses the traditional tool of simile but in an innovative way: At first, wallpaper is nonsensical as a
comparative, but after some thought, my elderly aunt’s strangely patterened hallway wallpaper came to my mind
and I thought ‘yes’: Bishop has captured the texture and unusual pattern of the fish’s transluscent skin…
‘roses’ is a simile that marks the change in tone: a positive symbol of beauty…
4. Find two metaphors in this poem. Explain what two things are being compared in each one and what the
metaphor is trying to express.
beard of wisdom:
rainbow crosses from metaphor to symbol…
5. Find two examples of repetition and explain their effect.
he: early on:
short pronoun heavy sentences are colloquial and intentionally unpoetic: convey
immediacy, honesty: Here: speaker’s mixture of shock, interest and guilt
rainbow: the only obviously ‘poetic’ line. Don’t do this in prose…transcendent…epiphany…
6. Find an example of insinuation/implication (in place of outright statement). Why is it used?
7. Find an example(s) of personification. What is the effect?
‘his sullen face’
subtle personification (not Disney) stops short of embarrassing pathetic fallacy
8. What is ironic about the situation at the end of this poem?
Fish
wins: she claims victory!
9. Why is the last line so different and special?
10. This is an example of a free verse poem. What does this mean and what is the effect?
11. List four significant pronouns and explain their significance.
Bishop: ‘The Bight’
1. List three phrases which create the image of the setting in the reader’s mind. Comment on the diction.
WHITE, CRUMBLING RIBS: this phrase through onomatopoeia and metaphor helps create the image
of a decaying boat in a small, working port
2. What is the speaker’s tone, or attitude toward the setting (or subject) at the start of the poem?
From dark and foreboding…
3. Find four similes used in this poem. Explain what two things are being compared in each one and what the
simile is trying to express.
Like pick-axes…
pelicans…
4. Find three examples of ‘matter-of-fact’ diction and syntax. Explain the effect.
Click, click goes the dredge
5. Find three examples of more ‘poetic’ language. What is the effect?
6. How has the tone changed over the course of the poem? Where?
7. What is the deeper, thematic meaning in the poem?
Awful but cheerful
Sense of Place/Travel
In many ways, Bishop fulfills the modern American poet’s search for what William Carlos Williams called “a
sense of place”. Like he, her poems often describe the significance of a speaker’s experience of a place, while
defining some particular aspect of existence in the process. This search for communion with a place obviously may
has its roots in Bishop’s own life. Her childhood was defined by instability as she was shunted from one relative
to another after her Mother’s committal. Many of the Titles of her poems tell us
where the speaker(!) is and describe the action which surrounds them as they try to come to terms with this place.
She referred to the capacity of places to allow us to access a deeper understanding of ourselves through
contemplation.
These places were called “Geographical mirrors”.
Questions of travel
Themes: Travel, The morality of tourism, home, introspection through observation/extro-spection
Subject matter – Bishop describes a number of landscapes in this poem.
Analysis – Section 1 (lines 1 – 12) sets the scene and establishes the Brazilian location of the poem. The poet
describes a lush, spectacular landscape whose beauty is reflected in the sibilant “s” in “spill over the sides in soft
slow – motion” which creates a harmonious musical effect. However, the speaker feels claustrophobic in her
environs,
“There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams”. Spoiled American tourist?
Everything happens too quickly. The streams move “rapidly down to the sea”, the clouds and streams are always
“travelling, travelling”. Even the evolution of the waterfalls is seen as a fast process, Repetition implies
immediacy…
“For if those streaks, those mile – long, shiny, tearstains, Aren’t waterfalls yet’
In a quick age or so, as ages go
here,
They probably will be.”
The negative connotations of this metaphor are obvious. Is Bishop suggesting that it will be an unpleasant process?
Perhaps not purely negative. But clearly engaging in a deeper, more than superficial interaction with the landscape.
Poem is about the scenery but also us watching us watching the scenery.
Section 2 (lines 13 – 29) lists the poet’s objections to the activity of travel. She suggests that it would be better to
remain at home and imagine such things rather than visit them.
“ Oh must we dream our dreams And have them too?” (oh-interjection, immediacy)
For her, travelling is sometimes a form of voyeuristic/vicarious intrusion into another landscape, another culture.
“ Is it right to be watching strangers in a play In this strangest of theatres?” Tourists are represented as “childish”,
greedy consumers who do not take time to comprehend the significance of what they visit.
Section 3 (lines30 – 59) provides an argument against staying at home. However, her arguments do not seem
convincing as they are described in ambivalent (both)/ambiguous (UNCLEAR) terms. The pink trees are described
in a striking simile. They are compared to performers in a pantomime, suggesting that there is something over–the–
top (hyperbole) about their appearance. Similarly, the man’s clogs, while unique, make a “sad” sound
(personification-pathetic fallacy). Also, the “fat brown bird” has a sweet song but is in a cage, despite the brilliance
of its construction.
She cannot understand the history of the people who made them and, so, is left with as many questions as answers.
Bishop has adopted the naïvely careless/rude/ignorant approach of some tourists to native cultures. Not
necessarily her all the time…but we all carry our own cultural baggage!
Section 4 (lines 60 – end) attempts to resolve these questions. Only the traveller can answer these questions for
themselves. Bishop suggests that the desire to travel may stem from a lack of imagination.
She invokes the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, to support this theory. However, ultimately, she cannot answer
these questions conclusively. The final lines are significant as the poet suggests that it is only through travel that
we can come to understand what home is.
Perhaps the poem chronicles the journey for a sense of place which the poet has undertaken.
Last stanza is subjunctive: typical of Bishop- there are no easy answers. Travel does imply cultural imperialism but
Bishop does not settle on a leftwing diatribe against middle class values. Bishop goes to Brazil, we go to India, to
entertain ourselves but also to learn about the place and more about ourselves, not a purely selfish or worthless
exercise…
'The Armadillo' is also remarkable for its vivid descriptions, original images and moments of insight.
Bishop is struck by the delicate beauty of the fire balloons which the Brazilian people released in honour of Saint
John: 'the paper chambers flush and fill with light'. A well-chosen metaphor helps us to picture a constellation of
stars: 'they steer between / the kite sticks of the Southern Cross'. However, for all their beauty and romance, the
fire balloons' passage possess a terrifying destructive capacity, which the poet vividly/effectively conveys with the
image of an exploding 'egg of fire'. The armadillo is described with
typical precision: 'a glistening armadillo left the scene,/rose-flecked, head-down, tail-down'. The poet's observant
eye takes in every aspect of the scene, even noticing that a baby rabbit is 'short-eared, to our surprise'.
Intentionally deflates the tension… colloquialism and incongruous ‘baby rabbit’ force the reader to take a step
back from a potentially tragic scene
The moment of insight occurs in the concluding stanza as the poet becomes aware of man's unthinking
destructiveness. The fire balloons remind her of falling bombs, while the helpless animals come to symbolise all of
the innocent victims of war and oppression. The seemingly tough and independent armadillo is pathetically
vulnerable. I was struck by the closing image of 'a weak mailed fist / clenched ignorant against the sky' because it
powerfully underscores humanity's vulnerability to forces of destruction. Here the poet offers us another thoughtprovoking, if grim, insight into the reality of life.
Connect these two poems, under the themes of:
TravelTechnique-
Name
Bishop: Sestina, First Death in Nova Scotia
Theme: Biography/Childhood – Childhood is presented as a precious entity which is threatened by external
factors. The innocence of childhood is threatened by Death in “ First Death in Nova Scotia” and “ Sestina” and by
the child’s realisation that she is not the centre of the Universe but a small part of the human race in “ In the waiting
room”. The inspiration for these poems can be found in Bishop’s own childhood which was defined by isolation.
Her Father died when she was only 8 months old and her Mother went insane with grief, being institutionalised
when her daughter was 5 years old. Bishop was raised by various family members and, as a result, never felt that
there w\as a place she could call home. Her happiest childhood days were spent under the care of her Maternal
grandmother at Great village, Nova Scotia and many of the places described by Bishop in her poems reflect various
aspects of this idyllic place.
Sestina
Critics agree that this is a highly autobiographical poem which deals with the period after Bishop’s mother was
institutionalised permanently due to mental illness and she went to live with her maternal grandmother. Once again,
the child’s sense of loss is evoked through the poem’s atmosphere and its detailed presentation of the physical
objects in the kitchen where the poem is set.
Analysis – Stanza 1 begins in a domestic scene as a grandmother reads jokes from an almanac to her granddaughter.
However, grief is suggested by the Autumnal atmosphere and the “failing light “. This is made explicit by the
description of the grandmother “laughing and talking to hide her tears.”
Stanza 2 chronicles the grandmother’s superstitious thoughts as the almanac, she believes, “foretold “ the tragedy
which has engulfed the house. It is suggested that this grief is “ only known to a grandmother “ because is not
equipped to mourn the loss of her parents because she is too innocent to comprehend it.
The sense of grief seeps through the child’s innocence, which is unable to protect her from it, and this is emphasised
by Bishop’s personification of the kettle.
“the teakettle’s small hard tears
Dance like mad on the hot black stove”
Darkness is, again, evident in this description and the rain, which was “ falling “ in stanza 1, is now more violent
and threatening.
The almanac takes on a sinister quality in the simile used to describe it in stanza 4.
“Birdlike, the almanac Hovers above the child”
This reminds us of the hungry loon in “First Death in Nova Scotia”. It is obvious that we are seeing things from a
child’s point of view here. This is evident in the metaphorical description of the grandmother’s tears,
“her teacup full of dark brown tears”.
Grief is ready to engulf the child. Her innocence cannot protect her indefinitely.
In stanza 5, Bishop personifies the “Marvel stove” and the “almanac2 as they discuss the child’s loss in impersonal
terms. This is, again, evidence of
the child’s point of view.* (but mixed…) The child tries to escape from the grief which surrounds her by drawing a
house and a man, generally supposed to represent her dead Father. However, the man’s buttons are like “tears”.
Grief, once again, looms large.
The final two stanzas are surreal as they describe how reality contaminates the child’s fantastic imaginary world.
The “little moons” fall into the flower bed which the child has drawn. It is suggested that her life will be tainted
with tears once she is old enough to understand her grief.
In 'Sestina,' the repetition of the poetic form seems obsessive, emphasizing the isolation of the scene and the way it
encloses the characters. It is particularly easy to feel the repetition as the first line of a stanza ends with the last word
of the previous stanza. Regardless of the number of arrangements of the final words, the sense of loss persists. The
envoy makes it clear that the trauma has not been resolved.
As much as one examines devices, there remains a feature—tone—that might best be called pure Bishop style.
Labels such as 'bemused,' 'knowing,' 'detached,' 'ironic,' and 'whimsical' catch elements of it. 'Sestina', in other
words, is not personal confession, as the lack of personal names indicates, but representative in the way that a tale
is. Along with the persona, the point of view, and the poetic form, the language creates a complex experience for the
reader. One sympathizes with both the grandmother and the child, sensing sorrow, yearning, and the tensing of the
child's effort to be an individual within the sheltering, suffocating domestic scene. Yet one also hears a wariness in
Bishop's telling of their story.
First Death in Nova Scotia
Subject matter – The poem is based on an incident from Bishop’s childhood and records a child’s reaction upon
encountering the corpse of her dead cousin, Arthur.
Analysis – Stanza 1 sets the scene in the parlour where the corpse is” laid out”. An atmosphere of coldness is,
immediately, evident in the repetition of the word “cold”. The child’s bewilderment is evident in the matter-of-fact
tone which described the bric-a-brac that surrounds the corpse.
This childish description is also found in stanza 2, as the speaker concentrates on describing the stuffed loon. The
bird is silent. It “ hadn’t said a word” and “ kept its own counsel” on the day Arthur’s father shot it. The child does
not seem to comprehend death here. Dead things are inanimate, they don’t walk or talk. Perhaps this allows her to
ignore her dead cousin. She is haunted by his presence, however, as she uses personal pronouns in describing the
dead bird. The loon and Arthur seem to be blurred in her mind. The metaphor which is used to describe the marble
table as a “ frozen lake” re –enforces the sense of coldness.
The child’s refusal to accept the reality of death is emphasised by her deliberately focusing on the loon and the
coffin when she is lifted up in order to put a lily in the corpse’s hand. The homely metaphor which is used to
describe the coffin is childlike in its description of death.
“Arthur’s coffin was A little frosted cake,”
However, death looms as an ominous presence at the end of the stanza as the “ red – eyed loon” eyes the little cake
hungrily. The speaker, finally, focuses on Arthur’s corpse in stanza 4. Her descriptions are childlike and innocent.
She compares Arthur’s corpse to a “ doll that hadn’t been painted yet” in a striking visual simile. She equates the
myth of “ Jack Frost “ to the process of dying, once again refusing to deal with the reality of the situation. However,
the word “ forever “ suggests a relisation has been reached. Once again the imagery of coldness is in evidence.
The final stanza contains the description of another fantasy about death as the child imagines Arthur joining the
royal couple in the warmth of their family life in the photograph. However, the child does not seem to believe this
particular fantasy. The poem ends in ambivalence as the child questions how it could be possible for her cousin to
join King George as a page at court “ and the roads deep in snow ? “ . Whiteness seems to win over redness at the
end of the poem.
'First Death in Nova Scotia' describes a child's attempts to come to terms with her first experience of death. It is
particularly poignant because we see the world through the eyes of an innocent, confused child. Even as a child,
Bishop was sharply observant, taking in every aspect of the cold parlour, including the old chromographs
and the stuffed loon. The description of the lifeless loon as 'cold and caressable' effectively conveys the child's
confusion when confronted by death. Bishop's images are typically imaginative: the marble topped table becomes
the loon's 'white frozen lake', while Arthur's coffin is 'a little frosted cake'. The simile comparing little Arthur to a
'doll that hadn't been painted yet' is very moving, highlighting, as it does, the tragedy of a child's death. Through
closely observing and reflecting on the situation in which she finds herself, the young Bishop gets a sense of the
terrible finality of death. The child tries to come up with a happy, fairytale ending to this tragic happening by
imagining that the royal figures 'invited Arthur to be / the smallest page at court'. However, she sadly concludes that
her lifeless cousin, trapped in the embrace of death and clutching his 'tiny lily' will be unable to travel 'roads deep in
snow'. It is the child's perspective on death which make this poem both interesting and poignant.
Filling Station
Theme – Sense of Place (Home); Travel; Biography; Family; Technique; Ironic snobbery?
Analysis – The squeamish opening line suggests that the speaker is a woman who is appalled at the filthy state of
her surroundings. Stanza 1 describes how everything is contaminated with “oil”.
In stanza 2 the word “dirty” is repeated three times in the poet’s description of the men who work here. A family
relationship is suggested which makes this a very unusual domestic scene.
Stanza 3 develops this association as the speaker begins to recognise some domestic qualities in the place, such as
the “wickerwork” furniture. However, she explicitly states that “a dirty dog” is “quite comfy”. Is she suggesting that
only an animal could feel at home in a place like this?
The apprehension of a lace embroidered mat “doily” and a “big hirsute begonia” in stanza 4 re - enforce the
speaker’s perception of the place as a home. Perhaps the poem is about the effort which people make to maintain a
level of beauty in the world. The unnamed person’s efforts balance out the inherent filth of the filling station. The
absent woman lends comfort to the scene.
Consider too Bishop's depiction of the 'Filling Station'; it is a grim place, dedicated to the functioning of machines.
It is, in fact, a masculine place. Yet the poet notices another, a warmer and more human, presence there. She is
astounded by the vision of a large plant, "a big hirsute begonia", and a doily "embroidered in daisy stitch".
There is a feminine presence somewhere in the background - a kind of absent presence. And this at last leads the
poet to the vague but optimistic conclusion that "somebody loves us all".
In the waiting room Theme – The loss of childhood innocence, travel/different cultures,
Sense of place, biography, technique (introspection through extrospection)
Subject matter – Waiting for her Aunt in a dentist’s waiting room.
Analysis - The poem begins with a matter-of-fact tone and is childlike in the way it begins. The description of her
surroundings are given in a child’s idiom, “ grown up people “. The child’s search for a coherent identity is
ritualised in her reading of “ National Geographic “ magazine which brings her into the complex world of
adulthood. The strange images which she encounters horrify her and force her to deal, psychologically, with her
own nature. It reads like a right of passage. This is emphasised by the moment when the young girl expletes an “oh”
involuntarily. This inability to contain her feelings results in a collapse of her identity. The stable world of the
familiar is replaced by the knowledge that she will become like the women in the magazine. Her sense of
disorientation is replaced by her return to the ordinary at the end of the poem, although now she is one of “them.”
Poems, annotated:
The Fish
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook Pronouns!
fast in a corner of its mouth.
He didn’t fight.
5
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
10
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
15
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
20
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
— the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
25
that can cut so badly —
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones, (diction: intentionally colloquial/vernacular)
the dramatic reds and blacks
30
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
35
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
1
of old scratched isinglass.
40
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
— It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face, personification/pathetic fallacy
45
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
— if you could call it a lip —
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
50
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
55
A green line, frayed at the end
1
isinglass (noun) thin, transparent sheets of mica used as windows or in lanterns
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom metaphor
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
repetition
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels — until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
60
65
70
75
The Bight
At low tide like this how sheer the water is. (!) Matter-of-fact/colloquial/Puts us there! Immediacy
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare consonatal
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches. normal, prosaic simile
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible. (metaphor)
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
(heavy-handed allusion)
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves. Prosaic,
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash Perfect example of Bishop’s prosaic poetry.
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings. personification
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm , (tawdry)
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.
At the Fishhouses
by Elizabeth Bishop
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
(subject ‘lost’ in setting)
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs (prosaic, practical, matter-of-fact, functional
vocabulary)
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
Abrupt change:
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea, (metaphor?)
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, (personification-simile)
is opaque, but the silver of the benches, (translucent)
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail, (diction, metaphor)
with small iridescent flies crawling on them. (repetition)
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood, (personification, pathetic fallacy…)
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
(prosaic, matter-of-fact; lends voice authenticity)
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb. (metaphor) (classic, self-contained, non-enjambing,
colloquial line.)
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty, (theoretical? Actually stated! )
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife, (implied, left unsaid:)
the blade of which is almost worn away.
Down at the water's edge, at the place (colloquial?)
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, (poetically descriptive)
element bearable to no mortal, (more dramatic, more philosophical)
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
(steps back into comforting colloquial)
He was curious about me. He was interested in music; (meta, whimsy bordering on Disney cuteness)
like me a believer in total immersion, (hah! Pun)
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug (sort of)
as if it were against his better judgment. (self-conscious personification)
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin. (personification, pathetic fallacy)
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand (repitition)
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones. (mix)
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
personification/ verbal noun!
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world. De
iption…but also suggestive..
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts (poetic, metaphoric, transcendant)
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15209#sthash.yZW3fogJ.dpuf
1. Find five lines of objective, ‘non-poetic’ description.
2. Find five lines where subjectivity, or more obvious ‘poetry’ appear.
A Prodigal
The brown enormous odor he lived by
unusual diction?
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
personification?
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare-even to the sow that always ate her young-till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts
(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),
the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year or more.
But evenings the first star came to warn.
The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
to shut the cows and horses in the barn
beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
safe and companionable as in the Ark.
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
The lantern--like the sun, going away-laid on the mud a pacing aureole.
Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,
he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight,
his shuddering insights, beyond his control,
touching him. But it took him a long time
finally to make up his mind to go home.
Questions of Travel
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, (hyperbole)
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, (metaphor)
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here, (intentionally colloquial)
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, (simile)
slime-hung and barnacled. Poetic but not pretty?
Think of the long trip home. (Speaker’s voice? )
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? We? Her?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful? (sarcasm)
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?
But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink. (simile)
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor. (mouthful) (awareness of condescension)
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.) (joke?)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque: (history)
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages. metaphor, diction
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:
"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"
1.
2.
3.
4.
Describeyourownbesttravelexperience.Evocative.
Anymisgivingsabouttravel?
Pick3repetitions,3similes/metaphors,3colloquialisms
?
The Armadillo
\This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars-planets, that is--the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
colloquial, prosaivc, non-enjambing, builds tension…
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene, black humour?
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft! - a handful of intangible ash (humour? sarcasm? colloquial?)
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Bishop’s diction and syntax ironically undercut the drama of the situation and emphasise our selective
anthropormorphism.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry! colloquial/strange
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
metaphor/dramatic/biblical/ apocalyptic/ diction
clenched ignorant against the sky!
vs. ?
Sestina
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
(hallucinatory)
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
personification
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears metaphor, pathetic fallacy
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house. captures child’s view
Tidying up, the old grandmother
Let’s tidy up, now!
hangs up the clever almanac
personification
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac simile/personification
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
poem moves into a stranger,surreal, more interpretive
sphere
She shivers and says she thinks the house
now, back to normal…tries to re-establish
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house. (The mixed pov)
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Theme:Childhood:
partly from the child’s point-of-view: limited third person, shifts between granny and child and a
detached adult poet?
captures this childlike pov well: ‘It's time for tea now’; (child remembers the oft-repeated phrases of
adults; like routines)
child’s strange, almost surreal/ hallucinatory take on nature/events: hovering almanac; grief
methodical syntax is reserved but realistically conveys child’s thought process
First Death In Nova Scotia
In the cold, cold parlor
repetition/colloquial
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales,
with Princess Alexandra,
and King George with Queen Mary.
Below them on the table
stood a stuffed loon
shot and stuffed by Uncle
dark tone lightened by silly sibilance
Arthur, Arthur's father.
Since Uncle Arthur fired
a bullet into him,
colloquial, methodical diction/humour?
he hadn't said a word.
He kept his own counsel
on his white, frozen lake,
description
the marble-topped table.
His breast was deep and white,
cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass,
much to be desired.
"Come," said my mother,
"Come and say good-bye
to your little cousin Arthur."
I was lifted up and given
one lily of the valley
to put in Arthur's hand.
Arthur's coffin was
a little frosted cake,
child-like metaphor
and the red-eyed loon eyed it
from his white, frozen lake.
inter-locking rhyme threatening? start of the
dawning of the significance of death
Arthur was very small.
childlike syntax/diction: conveys confusion
He was all white, like a doll
simile
that hadn't been painted yet.
Jack Frost had started to paint him
childish lore breaking in…
the way he always painted
the Maple Leaf (Forever).
He had just begun on his hair,
a few red strokes, and then
Jack Frost had dropped the brush
coming to terms…forever
and left him white, forever.
?
booh-ya!
The gracious royal couples
were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up
in the ladies' ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be
the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go,
clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow?
distracted by photos
A lie!! Tale-telling!
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
Such a colloquial opening!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated interesting repetition and perfect passive participle
to a disturbing, over-all tone shift?
black translucency.
diction has kicked into gear!
Be careful with that match! Back to colloquial immediacy! Imperative!
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit ppp monkey? Symbolic of her condescension
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy tone light-hearted?
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station), colloquial interjection, obviously creating tone, atmosphere of casual
conversation
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station? Conversation/rhetorical
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-impregnated technique: incredibly accurate/evocative yet realistic
metaphor
wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy. Alliteration and slang/shorthand further colloquial mood and imply a
softening of her attitude?
Some comic books provide snob?
the only note of color-of certain color. They lie snotty or soft sarcasm?
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Hairy?
Why the extraneous plant? Clearly extravagant diction: capture…
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily? OTT sarcasm/rhetorical: soft? Snobby?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
Most important colloquialism!
and heavy with gray crochet.) The deep thinking hiding behind the shallow ‘I think’ prompts a
sea-change in attitude….
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant, repetition!
or oils it, maybe. Somebody ‘maybe’/humour: saves it from Hollywood
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO—SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Accidental sibilance of wife/personification/pathetic fallacy/ her?
Somebody loves us all.
In the Waiting Room
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying. Non-enjambing!
I read it right straight through. Diction/syntax: colloquial!
I was too shy to stop. Oxymoronic?
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
(ejaculation)
--Aunt Consuelo's voice-- (interjection)
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
Even then, I knew she was
A foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed, (epiphanic moment)
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher-at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
admits mixed perspective/
word for it how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
metaphor: dawning realisation
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.