Ozymandias

Context- Percy Shelley antiwar; pacifist; hated oppressive monachal

government who didn’t like religion
Ozymandias based on Rameses II who was also a war leader and involved in
many conflicts like George III; the statue of Rameses is meant to resemble King
George
Romanticism:
 Dislike for industrialisation and embrace of nature
 Love of Supernatural

Structure – Sonnet (Love poet) 14 lines; first 8 lines present problem

(octave) but last six lines (sestet) solves the problem – Petrarchan
ABAB rhyme scheme
Line 9 has volta (sharp turn and change in the tone, theme)
Abab cdcd efef gg – Shakespearean
Iambic pentameter- 10 syllables per line unstressed and stressed creating
heartbeat
Volta in couplet
Ozymandias is mixture:
 octave (broken statue for once powerful ruler), sestet (nature is
overpowering and can excise any human achievements or civilisations and
outlives powerful ruler), first 4 lines have abab, changes to whole new
different type of sonnet which represents the changing and transition of
power (ababacdcedefef) and power gives way to new power,
 Volta on line 9 which represents a shift in tone and theme from human
power to nature power also juxtaposition as shifts from Ozymandias
boasting his dominance and command to nature and time destroying his
works and his insignificance in the grand scheme of things
 Caesura to represent the fragmentation of his statue which represents
human power by time and nature to emphasis the true authority of nature
over the futility of meaningless human control
 Enjambment line 2-3 to symbolise the flowing of time and the transient
nature of power over time as seen by the broken statue of the once
powerful leader
 Sonnet- usually written about love but not always romantic love as in this
case it is about Ozymandias love towards himself and towards power

Language
Cold command - alliterative repetition of hard ‘c’ reflects Ozymandias harsh
nature
‘cold’ represents a sense of death and unfamiliarity showing his commands are
no longer enforced and dead to the world. Contrasts to ‘desert’ as the desert
remains as it is and the 'lone and level sands stretch far away.' He no longer has
power over his surroundings and his authority is now futile.
Nothing beside remains – volta change from power of Ozymandias and his self-
proclaimed title of king of kings displaying his eminence and magnanimity
showing the power of humans but the next line is shows that nature outlives his
power and eroded his great empire to nothing but a fractured statue

London
Context-
 William Blake lived in London for almost his whole life. Respected bible but
disliked organised religion i.e. church of England
 Rebelling against misuse of power and class; critique of human power
exposing distance between those in power and those who are suffering
and how inescapable the suffering is because of the misuse of power by
those in control
 Hate for industrialisation which destroyed nature of London and caused
young children to operate heavy dangerous machinery

Structure-
Rhyme scheme- ABAB
Dramatic monologue
Quatrains- repetitive rhyming scheme and repeating quatrains represents
relentless and overwhelming suffering in the city
Repeating words represent inescapable and repetitive suffering
Cyclical structure (starts with suffering end with suffering constant loop)
Most lines have 8 syllables (iambic tetrameter), but marks of weakness line have
7 to show the weakness of the line and the line itself is weak to reflect the
weakness of the people

Language-
Repeating negative language highlights the overwhelming pain and suffering of
citizens caused by those in power
Blackening of church is ironic as it is meant to be the way to God, but the church
was taking money while children struggle as sweepers ruining their reputation
rich and powerful using the poor
Charter’d- mapped out which shows humans trying to control a natural power
(river) juxtaposition uncontrollable and how humans try to organise and control
nature but ironically can not
Marriage hearse to contrast destruction of marriage (marriage to join hearse to
depart)

The Prelude
Context-William Wordsworth- born in 1770, embraced nature and
supporter of French revolution, but became disillusioned with violence and was
romantic poet
Lived in Lake district outdoors to avoid family member he didn’t like that he was
sent to
Views on Man, Nature, and Society
Romanticism- dislike of urban life and embrace of natural world, love for
supernatural and use of simple, everyday words

Language- One summer evening (led by her): her is personified and

represents nature which could suggest the caring and protective nature of the
environment aka feminine values but also possess immense power shown later
in extract to protect itself from humans and nature leads man
“Straight I unloosed her chain…Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth”:
Stealth connotates to secrecy and covertness which suggests that the taking of
the boat is something he shouldn’t be doing but still does, showing that mankind
is prideful and disregarding of consequences of their actions despite it being
morally wrong society is made up of proud people who take from nature and
are oppressive and dominant as a result of power and pride
“Sparkling light, small circles glitteringly idly”: Semantic field of positive almost
celestial experience of the beauty of the lake and nature which makes the
contrast later on bolder and sharper
“to reach a chosen point”: Human believes he is in control and is the dominant
force at play and can do what he pleases
“utmost boundary”: the boy’s misinterpretation of the height of the mountain
represents the arrogant views of mankind about their knowledge and their apex
power yet they are severely outclassed by nature which remains above their
comprehension
“a huge peak, black and huge”

Structure- Written in blank verse which means it does not rhyme but
uses a set number of syllables per line which creates a freer narrative effect
because of the influence of Milton’s previous works spreading and changing the
form of lengthy philosophical poetry
Written in one long verse with no stanzas or pauses which overwhelms reader
and leaves you breathless which represents the intense feelings boy was feeling
(and Wordsworth own irl experience with nature)
Long verses influenced by Milton’s works such as Paradise Lost written in same
way
Volta (dramatic change in emotion and tone) at halfway point as positive
semantic field of nature changes into negative emotions of fear as he sees the
“huge, black” mountain
Juxtaposition between the two halves of the extract contrast and show the
insignificance of humans compared to nature and the power of nature to induce
serenity or fear
Enjambment used in first three lines and the continuation of the sentence over
the lines shows the narrator’s lack of coherence and their urgency to relay the
experience, emphasising its effect on him

Form- epic poem: length narrative poem telling story usually adventure
with one major event (Romantic era they were based on historical events or
mythology)
Writer viewed the realisation of the power of nature as so intense that it was
worth the major event typically found in epic poem
Nature is personified and is the heroic character of the epic poem

My Last Duchess
Context- died in Venice 1889, lived in Victorian era, his controlling
father in law resembles the Duke in the poem but he met Elizabeth after he
wrote MLD

Structure-
Language-
Form- Dramatic monologue

Bayonet Charge
Context- Ted Hughes was 20th century poet laureate born in 1930 post
WW1 Britain
Passionate about nature and animals and poet laureate from 1984-1998
Admired works of Wilfred Owens who he viewed as contemporary
 Never fought in WW1 but was deeply fascinated by experiences relayed to him
by his father who fought in it; he had an accurate first hand primary source of
experiences soldiers went through

Structure- starts with in media res which confuses reader to make

them feel what the soldier feels when he charges towards the enemy
Use of enjambment creates disjointed and unordered and chaotic effect on
reader through the use of changing lines which reflects chaos of battlefield and
fear the charge was inflicting on the soldier; reader struggles to understand
structure like soldier struggles to navigate on the battlefield
Use of caesura (on line 11) in second stanza forces reader to stop and think
about the text which is what the soldier does as he stops and considers his
actions and his motive behind them
Chaotic structure represents the fluctuating and unpredictable manner of war
and the psychological effects it can cause on the human mind

Language- “hot khaki, his sweat heavy,”- repeating h sound

imitates soldier’s heavy breathing as he runs
“Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame”- hare’s frantic movements
shows the danger it is in hence the danger the soldier is in
“green hedge”- contrasts violence and bloodshed with life of nature symbolised
by green
“And crawled in a threshing circle” use of agriculture terminology represents the
negative effects of war on nature not just mankind
“raw in raw-seamed”: repetition of raw and signify discomfort and the
overwhelming intensity of the shock and fear of the soldier as the poet repeats
words which shows their difficulty in expressing their emotions which then
represents the soldier- links to theme of indescribable war as soldier can not
clearly express themselves

Form- use of enjambment and caesura and uneven line lengths which
represents struggling soldier running through the mud. Universal figure to
represent any young soldier fighting in the war

Kamikaze
Context: born in 1983, worked as clinician and teacher in NHS and
wrote national poetry prize in 2001, poem from collection based on life and
death in natural world
Kamikaze is suicide plane attack on enemy bases and seen with great honour in
Japan and those who backed out were shunned by society

Structure: seven stanzas each with 6 lines present the tight control
of military life and cultural expectations for mindless self sacrifice in the line of
duty
Free verse and enjambment contradict the tight control shown by the regular
order of lines and stanza which reflects the freedom the pilot wants; conflict
between his personal thoughts and his sense of national duty
Use of repetition of safe hints at pilots mindset, remembering his father out at
sea and him waiting for his return and now as a pilot he feels like he has
ventured out to sea and wishes to return safely to his children

Language:
“green blue translucent sea”: natural imagery
“the dark shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the
sun”: use of sibilance repeats hissing sound which creates sense of energy as
the smooth movements reflect the natural wonder of the fish
The intense nature and serenity he felt because of nature that pilot was unable
to deprive himself and hundreds of others of experiencing this pleasure by
completing the mission
“a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous”: first use of full stop paired with
metaphor coupled with adjectives creating threatening, intense and powerful
image highlight its importance
Importance is given to tuna fish due to punctuation which suggests that the
power of nature (represented by the tuna) supersedes the power of the pilot (aka
man) -this realisation of futility of mans power in the face of nature is want
causes the pilot to turn back as a result of the contrast of how minute and
unimportant human life when compared to the vast array of nature
“Her father embarked at sunrise”: sunrise is a powerful image of nature but links
to Japan which is known as the land of rising sun and the rising sun flag used by
Japan’s military
“arcing in swathes like a huge flag”: simile representing the pilot’s mindset
thinking about flag (links to military flag above) as he is forced to see everything
through the lens of national service and the pride it brings, which reduces as the
poem progresses signifying the way the pilot is becoming more convinced that
he should turn back
“built cairns of pearl grey pebbles”: cairns are grave landmarks so connotations
of death here remind reader what is at stake in a kamikaze attack
Use of him for father and she for narrator shows the distance placed between the
relationship of her and her father as result of the social shame he brought by
backing out of the attack
“And though he came back, my mother”: use of first person here reflects regret
and guilt of speaker rejecting her father and affirms her relation to him
“he must have wondered which had been the better way to die”: conflict
between his personal conscience and cultural expectation as he ponders whether
the physical death in the kamikaze attack would have been better than the
metaphorically death he has experienced socially and emotionallyhis return
home was a kamikaze attack as his life ended at the point

Form: narrative poem

The Charge of the Light Brigade:

Context: Alfred lord Tennyson born in 1809 to Victorian middle class
family, engagement to his wife was at one point forbidden by her father due to
his poverty, Poet Laureate in 1850 till death and wrote poem while serving as PL
Light Brigade was made of lower class members due to lighter armouring so
more vulnerable
Leaders of the army never experienced true pains of battle and were in charge
through buying their place at the top without any experience
Og news war report used “blunder” to call the charge a mistake

Structure:
“Forward, the / Light Brigade!”
1 stressed followed by 2 unstressed (dactyl) which is a feet and 2 feet in the line
(dimeter)
Dactylic dimeter used to represent galloping hoofbeats of the horses to mimic
the sound of the battlefield to immerse the reader into the battle to further our
appreciation for the bravery and honour shown in that intense condition to a
higher level and empathise with them
Falling rhythm represents the falling soldiers and the futility of the charge as a
result of the blunder (mistake)
“Someone had / blundered”: blundered falls short of 1 stressed then 2
unstressed which doesn’t conform to dactylic dimeter which signifies the line’s
importance and criticising the leadership error which led to this suicide charge
Drawing reader’s attention, by breaking the rules of the structure, to his disgust
to the mistake but had to done subtly as he is PL
Language:
“valley of Death”: Biblical reference to Psalm 23 and David versus Goliath,
comparing them to the Brigade versus the more powerful Russian army and how
the members of the higher ranks should have protected the brigade but they
were forced to engage in dangerous conflict despite being in a weaker state
“horse and hero fell”: Euphemisms weaken impact of battle and provide
censorship to an extent and links to falling rhythm as the soldiers fell
“in Jaws of death”: negative connotations of claustrophobia which implies
soldiers were eaten up and shredded by the onslaught of bullets

Form: ballad is a form of poetry that was often sung and contains refrain
which is a regularly repeated line (600 at end of verse), used for important
stories that need to be passed down generations used in medieval times to
remember things you should never forget
folklore element to poem and that the bravery and sense of honour display by
the soldiers should be forever immortalised as well as the stupidity of the
aristocratic leadership and the blunder that caused the event should never be
left in the past

Exposure
Context: Born in 1893, joined army in 1915 and died just before WW1

Pursued career in the Church but gave up as he felt the Church failed to care for
people
Revolutionary war poet ,unlike the previously patriotic admiring and praising
poems like Light Brigade, exposed true conditions and reality of war to dispel
public views of war being honourable due to England not having a major war for
100 years prior to WW1
Believed war was pointless and futile and poem was designed to enlighten public
“exposing” the truth

Structure: each stanza starts with a blunt and powerful sentence

“our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”
followed by lines with highly emotive vocab “confused our memory…Worried
by silence…curious, nervous” but ends with an anti-climax ending “But
nothing happens”
Dramatically heightens tension and builds up for climactic moment but rapidly
drops as it ends anti- climactically where very little happensthis represents the
long periods of time waiting in the trenches by soldiers but attacks were rare
leaving soldiers to live in waiting with heightened fear and sense which leads to
combat stress reaction
Consists of 8 stanza which doesn’t progress as first and last stanza end (refrain)
with the same words, creating a cyclical structure to symbolises the monotony of
life in the trenches and the absence of change and the lack of achievement
highlighting wars futility
Use of ellipse to slow down pace of the poem and force reader to endure the
gruelling frustration soldiers experienced as they waited and suffered in the cold

Language:
Ending lines of stanza 2,5,6 and 7 which don’t follow the ABBA rhyme scheme
(the C line) use rhetorical questions and answers it to create a hidden
conversation within the poem with the final line saying “For love of God is dying”
which suggests that Owen believes that after being exposed to the horrors, love
of God is disappearing and people are beginning to question God’s existence as
the supposed benevolence of God is hard to believe when they see the cruel
atrocities of war
However, “dying” could be a reference to Christ’s sacrifice comparing his death
for our sins to the soldiers who sacrifice themselves for their country
“like a dull rumour of some other war”: Biblical reference to Jesus explaining
signs of end of world “you will hear of wars and rumours of wars” which suggests
Owen believes his situation is like end times
“our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”: personification
of the weather presents the idea of nature being more of a threat than the
enemy forces which is supported by “Dawn massing in the east her melancholy
army” which contrasts normal connotations of dawn of being bringer of a new
day and rejuvenating sunlight but here is preparing her forces to attack, military
terminology further suggests the little difference between the weather and the
enemy
The use of “her” juxtaposes typical feminine roles of nurturing and care through
the use of military language and connotations and comparisons to an army
“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”: The sibilance creates a
hissing sounds which is similar to the sounds of ricocheting bullets and/or the
sound of shivering due to the subzero temperatures

Form:
ABBAC rhyme scheme; the first 4 lines establishing a rhyme scheme only for the
last line to break it down reflects the building momentum and anticipation of
soldiers within the trenches for battle which is never realised
Repetitiveness of the rhyme scheme and structure reflects the futility and
cyclical situation war truly is
Pararhyme is where the words at the end of 2 lines have the same consonant
sounds but not the same vowels “knives us, silent salient, nervous” which
creates a permeant sense of anxiety and incompleteness which
a) allows us to empathise with the soldiers and the constant fear they
experienced while waiting in between battles
b) denies the poem the complete and perfected full rhyme just as the soldiers
fighting were denied closure and the pleasure of combat
Caesura in sixth stanza which is the first use of punctuation (excluding comma)
mid sentence is used when soldiers think about back home, the caesura creates
a divide between the people at the home country and the soldiers in war and
contrasting their condition

Poppies
Context: born in 1963, grew up in Italy and England, lived in northern
Ireland during 80s and experienced The Troubles, textile designer and poet

Structure:
Written in free verse so lacks rhyme scheme of syllable meter which creates
impression of poem being an outpouring of emotions and uses varying stanza
lengths which represents the chaos war inflicts on people not on the frontlines
and represents the grief and fear due to the uncertainty of her son’s situation
Caesura breaks the free-flowing lines which suggests the emotions of the
speaker begin to overwhelm her due to her grief and her futile attempts to
maintain control over her emotions
Enjambment “rolled, turned into felt // slowly melting” creates fragmented
feeling of the narrator alluding to and being absorbed by incomplete memories
and her emotional breakdown

Language:
“spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias”: blending of
domestic and military words with “spasms” creating an image of pain and
suffering and “blockade” suggesting the isolation the mother feels from her son’s
life
“Sellotape bandaged around my hand”: bandaged connotes to wounds and
injuries sustained military connotations and vocab embedded in lines
“a single dove”: symbolises peace but mourning which presents the harsh reality
through juxtaposes typical symbolic references
“I was brave”: undermines idea that only soldiers can be brave and the mother’s
ability to continue functioning despite her intense pain and despair proves her
bravery implying that war also affects civilians not actively fighting, a criticism to
the glorification of war

Form: dramatic monologue; poet taking the persona of a character that is

speaking to somebody else directly but never get a response from the listener
which emphasises the pain caused onto the ignored mother and solely
considering the pain war has on those left behind and not including the effects
on soldiers which is shown through the son’s silence and also because he is not
present with his mother and off in war