COMPARISON

• BAYONET CHARGE + REMAINS

  "Suddenly he awoke and was running - raw"

  "On another occasion, we got sent out"

  BOTH START IN ACTION (medias res)

  • Shows how both are unprepared for war and conflict, its sudden, confusing and fast paced. No amount of training or preparation will ever protect you from the grips of war.
  • Remains = casual, its conversational almost numb, yet still able to indulge a reader straight away, it suggests a routine that still throws you everyday even when coping with it using casual tones.
  • Bayonet Charge = its faced paced, emergent, its a "raw" run fuelled by adrenaline, suggests its perhaps one of the first times. Each experience remains the same in remains and bayonet but one speaker is perhaps more experienced. "raw" - vulnerable, pain.
• BAYONET CHARGE + REMAINS

  BOTH IN FREE VERSE

  • reflecting the utter chaos and disorder being thrown into conflict has, it disorientates the speaker in Bayonet Charge rendering himself useless "rifle numb as a smashed arm"
  • The free verse and conversational tone in remains however portrays the casualty of his story telling, the idea that both soldiers are similar in the environments of death and destruction, one desensitised and one vulnerable.
• BAYONET CHARGE + REMAINS

  "In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations" - Mechanical Metaphor

  "Probably armed, possibly not." - Parallelism

  • They both explore the uncertainty and apprehension around their actions, the reasoning behind this conflict seems blurred.
  • The speaker in Bayonet Charge is caught in the indifferent system of cold clockwork, a cog in a machine of war, his fate decided by external distant forces, emphasised with the cosmic imagery.
  • The man questions whether his enemy was a threat or not, its a strong sense of moral doubt, indented in isolation to magnify the guilt,whilst his conflict is more internal, they both display the dilemma of purpose in their actions in war.
• THE EMIGREE + CHECKING OUT ME HISTORY


  “There was once a country… I left it as a child” -

  "Blind me to me own identity"

  BOTH FEEL SENSE OF LOSS AND IDENTITY

  • In The Emigree, this quote reflects the speakers nostalgia, the loss of her homeland, the ellipsis emphasising this distance in her exile. Sensing a fairytale like tone, we understand her delusional outlook on her country, yet she longs for it and feels as if part of her identity has been taken from her as she left. Delusion- "run with tyrants" "branded by an impression of sunlight"
  • Whilst in Checking out me history the rather forceful and oppressive actions that blinded him and took part of his identity prevents him from understanding and claiming it even though its right before him. It points to the effect of colonisation and a 'white history' written by its victors.
  • AGARD - displaced culturally and intellectually.
  • RUMEN - displaced geographically
• THE EMIGREE + CHECKING OUT ME HISTORY

  • both explore how identity is shaped by culture and heritage and controlled by the mechanics of society.
  • Repetition of "Sunlight" - rumens and "dem tell me" - agard
  • Whilst both use repetition to emphasise the loss of their cultural identity, rumens explored this through the motif of light, as if this beacon of beauty has been ripped from her. the love and light of her homeland "hides behind" her, the truth is that the "light" she sees in her homeland is now a war torn state of tyranny, yet she guards it hanging on to the delusion. She feels as though the world has separated her from her home, like a large part of who she is and her identity is somehow lost and threatened by this dark war, she copes by repeating and persuading an audience of its beauty.
• THE EMIGREE + CHECKING OUT ME HISTORY PT2

  • Differently, in checking out me history, agard through repetition highlights the absurdity and anger he experiences through his loss of cultural identity through a colonised history he was taught. The phrase highlights his punitive oppression in education, the inability for his culture to be understood in a system that was meant to teach him the truths of history. He now recognises this through his own resistance and actively reclaims his history throughout the poem whilst highlighting the failures of external forces which brutally "blinded" him to his own identity.
  • Whilst both poems acknowledge and emphasise in repetition the loss of identity, agard actively reclaims it, whilst rumens portrays in her poem the inability too.