Power and conflict key quotes

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  • Power and conflict- key quotes: Part 1
    • Ozymandias
      • 'boundless and bare.'
        • Alliteration- emphasises that statue is forgotten.
      • 'And on the pedestal these words appear.'
        • Volta reflects how human structures can be destroyed or decay
      • 'Mighty and despair.'
        • Ironic- Oz tells other 'mighty' kings to admire his statue and despair. Shows effect of Capitalism, they should despair as power is only temporary.
      • 'Lone and level.'
        • Alliteration- creates idea that desert is vast, lonely and lasts longer than the statue.
      • 'Colosal wreck.'
        • Metaphor, emphasises that the statue is forgotten, as well as highlighting Oz's ego.
      • 'Vast and trunkless legs of stone.'
        • Shows the statue is barely standing, suggesting is is waring away by the desert and by time.
      • 'Sands stretch'
        • Sibilance, shows nothing outlasts time.
      • 'Wrinkled lip'
        • Leaves out the rest of face, describing only mouth, reduces rulers potray.
    • London
      • 'chartered street.'
        • Visual imagery. 'Chartered' repeats in next line.
      • 'mind-forged manacles.'
        • Metaphor, conveys entrapment in psychological chains created and maintained by ideas/beliefs. People and infants trapped in poverty.
      • 'youthful harlot's curse... new-born infants tear.'
        • Juxtaposition, corruption of innocence forces prostitutes into pregnancies.
      • 'in every' x3
        • Power of three- highlights universal effects of oppression- persuasive.
      • 'plagues the marriage hearse.'
        • Oxymoron-links death to marriage, when marriage is traditionally linked as a function of having children.
      • 'Black'ning church appalls.'
        • Shows the church is corrupt. Links to 'runs in blood down palace walls.' as both show colours of the French Revolution
      • 'Soldier's sigh.'
        • Sibilence
    • The Prelude
      • '(led by her)'
        • Unclear who 'her' is. In an earlier part of poem, suggests nature is personified.
      • 'A little boat tied to a willow tree.'
        • Happy tone, idyllic. repetition of 'L' sound makes poem flow like a boat on water. Enjambment gives effect of easy flow of memories
      • 'Troubled pleasure.'
        • Oxymoron, hints at narrators guilt.
      • 'elfin pinnace.'
        • Metaphor of a fairy boat creating effect of a magical scene. Otherworldly, but not threatening.
      • 'The horizon's bound, a huge black peak, black and huge.'
        • Contrast from magical tone to now a more threatening one.
      • 'Water like a swan.'
        • Simile- bird is graceful and powerful, in control. Just as narrator feels in his boat.
      • 'Trembling.'
        • Present participle- narrator is scared.
      • 'The horizon's utmost boundary; far above was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.'
        • Emptiness contrasts with 'huge peak' line as makes appearance of mountain more shocking.
    • My Last Duchess
      • 'Duchess painted on the wall.'
        • Presents the Duchess as artwork.
      • 'Then all smiles stopped together.'
        • Duchess is dead?
      • 'piece of wonder.'
        • Presents the Duchess' beauty
      • 'She thanked men,- good! but thanked/ Somehow - I know not how- as if she ranked.'
        • Caesura and Enjambment. Conveys the broken relationship between the narrator and the Duchess. Iambic Pentameter.
      • 'Looking as if she were alive.'
        • Prefers painting over real thing as he has control over painting.
      • 'You disgust me; here you miss or there you exceed the mark.'
        • Disgusted that the Duchess isn't perfect.
    • Exposure
      • 'Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.'
        • Imagery- Jesus said ' you will hear of wars and rumours of wars.' Also language suggests that the soldiers find their state unreal; they barely believe in their duty any more.
      • 'Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.'
        • Sibilance creates ominous sound, suggests bullets make a soft sound, reducing their threat in comparison to the army.
      • 'Flowing flakes that flock.'
        • Alliteration of 'f' consonant cluster, is a discordant (lacks harmony) and is disruptive to the line opposite 'flowing.
      • 'Merciless iced east.'
        • Sibilance creates a hissing effect, suggesting that the biting wind is attacking the soldiers.
      • 'Our brains ache.'
        • Collective personal pronoun 'our' shows this experience was shared by most soldiers on the frontline.
      • 'But nothing happens.'
        • Structure-refrain-like repetition emphasises the monotony the soldiers are living through. It is used again in the final line of the final stanza- anti climactic. Soldiers fight or flight.
      • 'Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.'
        • Language: short vowel sounds create a pinching tone as the soldiers are de-humanised by being presented as pieces rather than as whole humans.
      • 'All their eyes are ice.
        • Imagery- Metaphor conveys the loss of emotion in the soldiers frozen death-like state.
    • Storm on the Island
      • 'We build our houses squat.'
        • present tense creates immediacy. First person plural pronoun 'we' suggests narrator is a part of a community.
      • 'Nor are there trees which might prove company
        • Personification of nature, seen as seemingly friendly.
      • 'Forgetting that it pummels your house too.'
        • Direct Address- Creates a conversational tone, inviting the audience to reflect on their own experiences of storms.
      • 'Exploding comfortably.'
        • Oxymoron: 'exploding' - fear of stormy sea. 'comfortably' - feeling of safety.
      • 'raise a tragic chorus.'
        • Personification of nature develops a sense of danger/warning. 'chorus' in Greek classical tragedies were commentators on action. Implies as no trees to act as chorus to tragic storm, islanders are left isolated and alone to face and interpret the storm.
      • 'It's a huge nothing that we fear.'
        • Storm is visible. Nothing solid there contrasts with the line 'sink walls in rock'.
      • 'It blows full blast.'
        • Alliteration of 'b' emphasises the wind. Enjambment.
      • 'Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.'
        • Form/structure: blank verse with irregular enjambment and caesurae mimics natural speech. Told in a direct/informal way.
    • Bayonet Charge
      • 'green hedge, King, honour, human dignity, etcetera.'
        • Asyndetic list. Tone of mockery of the King as he's expected to fight.
      • 'In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nation.'
        • Synchronised. Soldiers are part of the machinery of fate.
      • 'numb as a smashed arm.'
        • Visceral. Simile shows that it is difficult to carry a rifle as it is like a disabled arm, disabling him.
      • 'Patriotic tear.'
        • Personification: harsh reality vs   patriotism.
      • 'running-raw.'
        • Alliteration- repeated 'r' sounds like bullets firing.
      • 'Suddenly he awoke.'
        • In media re- in the middle of the action. Third person.
      • 'Was he the hand pointing that second?'
        • Rhetorical question.
      • 'Yellow hare that rolled like a flame.'
        • Simile and colour imagery.
      • 'Terror's touching.'
        • Alliteration
      • 'its mouth open.'
        • Hare warning man- jolts him out of reflection.
      • 'eyes standing out.'
        • What dead people look like.
    • Remains
      • 'On another occasion.'
        • Voice- Starts mid story, speaking is relating to an event he and at least two others were involved in.
      • 'Legs it up the road.'
        • Language: strongly colloquial throughout, showing the soldiers English voice in a foreign land to emphasise his displacement.
      • 'myself and somebody else and somebody else.'
        • Insistence on all three being involved doesn't make him feel any less responsible.
      • 'I see every round as it rips through his life.'
        • Imagery: Metaphorical impact of the round bullets reflects the impact it had on the soldier.
      • 'sort of inside out.'
        • Language is euphemistic for the mans intestines being spilled by gunfire- shows speakers reluctance to face reality.
      • 'tosses his guts back into his body. Then he's carted off in the back of a lorry.'
        • Verbs 'tossed' and 'carted' imply desensitisation to violence and lack of respect for human life.
      • 'And the drink and drugs won't flush him out.'
        • Soldier is haunted by that memory despite attempts of self-medicate; hints at PTSD.
      • 'some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land.'
        • Sibilance combined with other consonants makes this jarring and slow to read, like the soldier constantly tripping over this memory on a loop.
      • 'his bloody life in my bloody hands.'
        • 'bloody' used as a curse as well as literally showing the soldier's anger that he has to live with this, as well as revealing his clear sense of responsibility.
      • 'he's here in my head when I close my eyes.'
        • Theme: tormenting power of a single moment can lead to a lifetime of trauma and feeling of responsibility: PTSD?

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