Kamikaze

• Themes

  Power of Nature

  Effects of Conflict

  Loss and Absence

  Memory

  Identity

  Individual experiences
• Context

  To be a kamikaze was seen as a great honour in the Japanese culture and if you didn't fulfil this you were seen as weak, pride is important to their culture.

  
  

  Garland liked to write about people and their lives and enjoyed listening to other peoples stories.
• Form and Structure

  The first stanza is a backstory before she recounts the story, the line break is used to start the daughters thoughts. The poem is so complex to reflect how complex the situation is, between the generations.
• Kamikaze


  Written by Beatrice Garland where a daughter is talking to her children about their grandad/her father.
• Ideas

  Japanese suicide pilots who loaded their planes with explosives and crashed them into American ships. A fighter plane used for suicide missions by Japanese pilots in World War II.
• Her father embarked and sunrise with a flask of water, a samurai sword'


  (Backstory about her father) There is an sibilance. here to emphasise the peace reflected in death. Further implied by the sunrise, the water is to purify himself spiritually and for a christian audience it would be a baptism to start a new walk of life. The verb 'embarked' is used for fishermen and other sailors at sea which persuades him not to kill them as he sees himself in them, the enemy is just like him.
• Like a huge flag waved first one way then the other in a figure of eight'


  (The daughter here is talking about the fish): Fish were seen as symbols of life, the simile is used to represents life and also the patriotic sacrifice he will make. The figure of eight symbolises infinity, he is imagining his imortal death and his internal death. Also the figure of eight returns on itself to show that he is going to do the same, in his daughters eyes this is the moment it changed.
• The loose silver of whitebait and once a tuna, the dark prince, muscular,dangerous.'


  The 'loose silver' is an illusion to a biblical reference as silver has represented betrayal as Judas traded 30 silver coins for Jesus to the Romans. The 'whitebait' sybolises his betrayal. 'The dark prince' could symbolise the Japanese royal family as they cause the deaths of the samurai.
• Only we children still chattered and laughed till gradually we too learned to be silent,'


  The verbs shows that they were grateful to have their father back and loved him. The line break to introduce a new stanza forms a Volta, the word gradually shows how it was a long painful process which was unnatural and not opinions formed by themselves as they had to learn it. .
• And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered which had been the better way to die.'


  The phrase 'he must have wondered' suggests that the daughter never spoke to her father about the decision to return. The idea that he ''must have wondered which had been the better way to die' suggests to the reader that he died emotionally and as a person in the family and he was permanently ostracised.