Kamikaze

• AO3:

  • Beatrice Garland was born in Oxford in 1930 and she recalled being forced to read poetry in school if she misbehaved, but ended up enjoying it.
  • During WWII, the term 'kamikaze' was used for Japanese fighter pilots who were sent on suicide missions. They were expected to crash their warplanes into enemy warships. The word 'kamikaze' quite literally translates as 'divine wind'.
• Overview:

  In this narrative poem, Garland explores the testimony of the daughter of a kamikaze pilot. Unlike many of his comrades, this pilot turns back from his target and returns home. The poem vividly explores the moment that the pilot's decision is made and sketches out the consequences for him over the rest of his life. Not only is he shunned by his neighbours but his wife refuses to speak to him or look him in the eye. His children gradually learn that he is not to be spoken to and begin to isolate and reject him.
• "Green-blue translucent" , "Pearl-grey".

  • Sensory imagery
  • Semantic field of colour

  The first section is full of vivid impressions of the senses. There is a semantic field of colour; 'green-blue translucent', 'dark shoals', 'flashing silver' and 'pearl-grey'. The senses of touch and taste are evoked. The impressions remind the pilot he is alive and life is for relishing. There is no mention of the senses in the section of the poem that deals with events after his choice. There is silence and it is 'as though he had never returned'.
• "Her father embarked at sunrise".

  • Use of verb 'embarked' having a double meaning

  The first stanza describes narrator’s father getting ready for the battle, and how he was all embedded for the Kamikaze atack that Japanese used against the US navy during WW2. The use of verb 'embarked' in the very first line of this stanza has a double meaning. First to board a plane, and second to emark upon a new adveture. This is a willingly done positive connotation, but readigng through the whole poem it comes out the word 'embark' is suitably used in terms of the relevance of the poem's theme.
• "till gradually we too learned to be silent, to live as though he had never returned".

  • Enjambment

  The use of enjambment presents the daughter's voice as calm, measured language, as though the storyteller is deliberately suppressing or withholding her feelings. The narrating daughter appears to have become sympathetic to her father’s actions and regretful of the way she, and other family members, shunned her him for what they had initially judged to be a shameful return.
• Aspects of Power and Conflict:

  • Power of society to make individuals conform to expectations.
  • Internal conflict
  • Conflict between family members
• Poems that can be linked:

  • The Emigree
  • Poppies