Power and Conflict anthology

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Ozymandias

  • "Vast" - size of the statue 
  • "Trunkless" - shows that the statue is incomplete
  • "Shattered visage lies" - ironic + even powerful humans have no control over nature
  • "King of kings". - arrogant + powerful
  • "Ye mighty" - arrogance
  • "Colossal wreck" - the ruined statue shows how human achievements are not important
  • "Lone and level" - alliteration, emphasis the feeling of empty space
  • "Stretch far away" - the desert is vast + survives for longer than the broken statue
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London

  • "Chartered street" - the whole city is affected
  • "In every" - repetition shows the scale of suffering 
  • "Mind-forged manacles" - metaphor, people are not physically held back, but their belief in their own weakness holds them back
  • "Chimney-sweeper's cry" - emotive language of child labour
  • "Black'ning church" - corrupt or tarnished by its failure to look after people
  • "Runs in blood down the palace walls" - reference to the French revolution, ordinary people suffer while those in the palace are protected
  • "Youthful harlot's curse" - prositution 
  • "Blasts the new-born infant's tear" - the innonece of new born babies, damaged by society
  • "Blights with plagues" - illness + disease
  • "Maariage hearse" - oxymoran, happy image of marriage with death, everything has been destroyed
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Prelude

  • "A little boat tied to a willow tree" - hapy, rural image
  • "Troubled pleasure" - oxymoran, hints at narrators guilt
  • "mountain-echoes" - vast size of nature
  • "Glittering idly" - peaceful + tranquil
  • "Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky" - vast image, contrast
  • "Elfin pinnace" - small boat
  • "Silent lake" - eerie, foreboding
  • "Heaving through the water like a swan" - suggests difficulty, similie
  • "Upreared its head" - personification, battle with nature
  • "Towered up between me and the stars" - conveys the feeling of being trapped
  • "That spectacle, for many days" - PTSD, life changing scene
  • "No pleasant image of trees" - his view of nature has changed 
  • "Huge and mighty forms" - frightening images of nature 
  • "Like living men" - humans are in battle with nature 
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My Last Duchess

  • "Thats my last Duchess" - first person pocessive pronoun
  • "That piece i wonder" - objectifies her, she's a piece of art work
  • "Since none puts by the curtain i have drawn for you, but i" - hides her behind a curtain, arrogant + conceted
  • "Of joy into the Duchess' cheek" - pink cheeks mean flirting with other men
  • "Half-flush" - suggests a woman is sexually excited
  • "A heart- how shall i say? - too soon made glad" - promiscious + slept with alot of men
  • "Bough of cherries" - men would bring her gifts
  • "My gift of a nine-hundred-year-old-name" - symbol of power, his name should have been more important to her (ironic her family name was more well-known)
  • "Then all smiles stopped together" - saying implicitly that she is dead
  • "Dowry will be disallowed" - marrying another woman, moves on quickly
  • "Notice Neptune" - subject of his art collection, which emphasises wealth + power
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The Charge of the Light Brigade

  • "Half a league, half a league, half a league" - rhythm sounds like the galloping horses' hooves 
  • "Death" - sinister, reader is warned from the beginning that something bad is going to happen
  • "Rode the six hundred" - presented as a group with one purpose
  • "Was there a man dismay'd?" - soliders realise the order was a mistake, but they do what they have been told to do, obey their orders
  • "Theirs not to reason why" - obedience + sense of duty
  • "Shot and shell" - sibilance, emphasises the idea of ammunition flying towards them
  • "Jaws of death" "Valley of hell" - images personify death + hell, make them seem like mosters that the soliders cannot escape
  • "Horse and hero fell" - sense of sdmiration is touched with sadness
  • "When will their glory fade?" - rhetorical question, challenges the reader
  • "Honour" - command is repeated, emphasises the honour for the soliders
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Exposure

  • "Merciless iced east winds that knive us" - nauture is personified and seems to be attacking them
  • "But nothing happens" - short, simple half line emphaasises their boredom + tension
  • "Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles" - assonance + onomatopeia cretae a vivid aural description
  • "What are we doing here?" - rhetorical question, to ask what is the point
  • "Dawn the massing in the east her melancholy army" - dawn is personified using the language of battle, normally dawn brings hope but not here
  • "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence" - sibilance mimics the whistling sound of the bullets flying
  • "Pale flakes with ********* stealth come feeling for our faces -" snowflakes are personified, they're maliciously seeking men's faces
  • "For love of God seems dying" - their love for God is disapearing 
  • "All their eyes are ice" - metaphor, overpowered by nature
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Storm on the Island

  • "We are prepared" - very strong opening statement, creates feeling of safety
  • "Blast" - plosive, greater impact because it comes at the start
  • "You know what i mean" - narrator speaks directly to the reader in a chatty tone, making you reflect on your own experience of storms
  • "Tragic chorus" - in a Greek tradedy, a 'chorus' comments on and explains the events. having no trees to act as a chorus suggests the islanders are left on their own to face and interpret the storm
  • "But there are no trees, no natural shelter" - caesura shows the pace of the line + emphasises the second 'no'
  • "Exploding comfortably" - oxymoran juxtaposes the feelings of fear + safety
  • "Spits like a tame cat turned savage" - similie, shows how familiar things become frightening during the storm 
  • "It is a huge nothing that we fear" - the storm is invisible, there's nothing solid there
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Bayonet Charge

  • "Bullets smacking the belly out of the air" - violent imagery + onomatopeia describes the sound + impact of the shots
  • "A rifle numb as a smashed amr" - similie suggests his rifle is useless + foreshadows the injuries he's likely to get
  • "Patriotic tear" - patriotism has turned te fear + pain, his heroic idelas have been replaced by painful reality
  • "Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs" - similie creates an image of someone blind + irrational, suggests there's no rational reason for war
  • "Dropped like luxeries" - he's been reduced to a basic level, he's attacking out of desperation, not moral principle
  • "His terror's touchy dynamite" - the soliders seem to have become a weapon rather than a human being, he's driven truly by his terror
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Remains

  • "Probably armed, possibly not" - doubt
  • "It rips through his life" - violent metaphor
  • "Sort of inside out" - childish description of the man's body, speaker seems unable to process it in an adult way
  • "Tosses his guts back into his body" - cold action, no respect for the dead man, 'tosses' make it sound as if the body is a piece of rubbish
  • "End of the story, except not really" - volta, speaker changes the mood
  • "His blood-shadow stays on the street" - visual reminder of the death, it foreshadows the memeories that are going to haunt him forever
  • "He's here in my head when i close my eyes" - PTSD, reminder of the events
  • "His bloody life in my bloody hands" - two meanings of bloody, swearing + blood. collective responsibilty, 
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Poppies

  • "Individual war graves"- ominous reminder that war kills individuals, loss is personal
  • "Smoothered down your shirts" - domestic, motherly image, may be the last time she can do this for her son
  • "Graze my nose" - reference to the sense of touch shows how the mother longs for the closeness she had with her son when he was small + emphasises the distance between them
  • "A treasure chest" - similie shows the world from the son's perspective, makes it sound exciting + full of precious experiences
  • "Without a winter coat for reinforcement" - battle imagery makes her sound vulnerable
  • "Playground voice catching on the wind" - links leaving for the army with leaving for school
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War Photographer

  • "Spools of suffering set outin ordering rows" - reels of film are described like soliders, like rows of war graves
  • "He has a job to do" - simple sentence, he has to put his emotions aside, like a solider does
  • "Running children in a nightmare heat" - reference to Vietnam War, link hints at the importance of the photographer's work, as the photo is sometimes creditited with helping the end of the war
  • "Something is happening" - volta, focus switches to the personal cost of war, he's remembering a specific death + its impact
  • "Half-formed ghost" - half-formed becuse the photograph is still developing, but also suggests his body's been mutilated
  • "A hundred agonies in black and white" - emotivie metaphor to describe his photos, having the photos printed seems to confirm + solidify the suffering
  • "Sunday's supplement" - sibilant + plosive sounds, considered not important enough for the paper
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Tissue

  • "Paper" - begins the first two sentences, suggests that it's important + can perhaps drive the change we need
  • "Written in names and histories" - paper is used to record family history, whole lives can be summed up by marks on paper
  • "If buildings were paper" - shift in tone, speaker suggests that if buildings were made from paper, people would notice that they are only temporary
  • "The su shines through their borderlines" - the sun is powerful, permanent force, whereas borders are just temporary marks on paper
  • "Fine slips" - receipts record our day-to-day lives, thay can tell a story about our whole existence
  • "Might fly our lives like paper kites" - similie hints our lives can be contolled by money
  • "With living tissue" - construction more complex + more 'grand' than any building
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The Emigree

  • "Sunlight-clear" - suggests that the memory is clear + happy
  • "Bright, filled paperweight" - metaphor suggests that the narrator's memories are bright + positive, but also solid + fixed
  • "It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants" - suggests that the country has been invaded + that the speaker's positive view of it isn't accurate
  • "Child's vocabulary" - refers to the language of her childhood, the metaphor makes the language seem bright + precious
  • "I comb its hair and love its shining eyes" - childlike joy, sounds like a child playing with a pet
  • "They accuse me" - unclear who 'they' are, but they are menacing + a threat
  • "Evidence of sunlight" - ends on a positive note, despite the threats of death, the city is still associated with 'sunlight'
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Kamikaze

  • "Full of powerful incarnations" - suggests that the pilot was under a spell, which hints at the influence of patriotic propaganda that kamikaze were exposed to, they were told that it was a great honour to die for their country
  • "At the little fishing boats strung out like bunting" - similie is homely + pretty, a far cry from war, bunting is associated with celebration, image is ironic
  • "Pearl-grey pebbles" - innocent childhood activities, contrast with the pilot's job in the war
  • "A tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous" - describing the tuna in this way reminds the reader of the dangers of nature
  • "And though he cam back" - daughters voice, less descriptive way about her father's subsequent life, hints her pain + empathy
  • "They treated him as though he no longer existed" - irony, he survived, but he is still treated as if he is dead
  • "He must have wondered which had been the better way to die" - destrutiveness of patriotism, pilots family are so ashamed, treat him as if he is dead
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Checking out me History

  • "Dem tell me" - emphasises separatness of the British education system from himself
  • "Me own history" - shows heritage + personal identity are connected
  • "De cow who jump over de moon" - uses nursery rhymes as an example of British history, makes it seem trivial but also links it to the tradition of reciting poems out loud
  • "Colombus and 1492" - European coloniser compared to native American cultures that resisted slavery, restriction contrasted with freedom. there's always more than one version of history, but he's only been taught one
  • "Dem tell me wha dem want to tell me" - repeats first line, reminds us of the narrator's anger
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