THE EMIGRÉE

• THE EMIGRÉE (Carol Rumens)

  Ideasss

  Rumens shows us how tyrannical leadership and corrupt power can impact an individual's identity and their sense of belonging- of who they truly are. -> through the way that war and the abuse of power force people to leave their homes. Time distances her from her childhood/ happiness.

  By the end of the poem, Rumens shows us how we must remain hopeful at reclaiming our identity through acceptance and new beginnings.
• FORM

  The poem is written in free verse (how lost she feels). It could be interpreted that Rumens uses free verse as a way of showing how the lack of predictability and therefore the lack of prediction as to whether she will be able to return to her country or not. It could also be interpreted that the free verse could be empowering because it could represent how the unpredictability of the rhyme scheme could resemble how one day she may be able to return back home.
• IMAGERY 1

  "It may be at war, It may be sick with tyrants"

  • Personification- reiterates how important their country is to them. "sick"-> infection, makes us think of spreading/ getting worse over time. We could argue that perhaps over the years, the state of her country has worsened which is also why she hasn't been able to return.
  • "sick"-> could also reveal the speakers hope that perhaps in the future, things within her country will resolve themselves which will enable her to return home, (just like a sickness can be cured).
  • "tyrants"-> abuse of power- suggests that her country has become corrupted due to the abuse of power by authoritarian power.
• IMAGERY 2

  "I have no passport, there's no way back at all"

  • "passport"-> a form of identity- it tells us where we are from.
  • Makes us think that the speaker lacks a sense of belonging- she is perplexed about her identity because she feels like she isn't able to return where she was born and does not feel a sense of belonging in her new home country. Rumens wants us to blame the corrupt leadership of her country for her feeling in this perplexed way.
• IMAGERY 3

  "The city/ of walls"

  • metaphor to reiterate how secluded her home country has become.
  • "walls"-> (suggests she feels like she is being excluded from her country and culture) are designed to keep us in or out of somewhere.
  • In this case, the speaker is already out of the country and seems to feel as though they are wanting to keep her out. We could also interpret the "walls" as the speaker's way of showing us how she feels like a traitor for leaving her country in the first place. She may be unable to return, due to feeling ashamed for leaving.
  • the enjambment of the line symbolises the divisions within her society.
• LANGUAGE

  "There once was a country... I left it as a child but my memory of it is sunlight clear"-> The opening of the poem sounds like a fairy-tale opning. A fairy-tale (nostalgia) is typically fictional and dream like and therefore positive memories of their home country.

  Rumens could be using this fairy-tale and make belief language as a way of implicitly showing us how the speaker can never return there- their memory is all they have left of this country.

  • "Sunlight clear"-> the speaker shows us straight away that her memories of her home country are positive and joyous- just like the sin- regardless of the fact that her country is at war.
  • "they" at the end shows how she is now separate from her home- she is excluded from her society- culture.
• STRUCTURE

  Rumens uses a cyclical structure within her poem by discussing the on-going idea of "the sunlight". Rumens does this in order to instil hope within us that one day , the conflict in her country will cease and she will be able to return home.Rumens could also be using the cyclical structure to show how the speaker could find a new sense of belonging and gain new sense of understanding her identity within her new country.

  • at the start, nostalgia, sense of belonging, but by the end of the poem, she feels vulnerable and lacking in a home- shows how society and people within it have the power to be isolated and take away the identity of an individual.