English Lit - Kamikaze

• Kamakazi


  A one-way journey into history, a suicide mission
• Kamakazi pilot


  • Left at sunrise
  • Took water and a samurai sword
  • Had a shaved head full of strong ideas
  • Only enough fuel to go to destination, not return
• Pilot halfway through mission

  Looked down at fishing boats and beauty of nature, reminded of childhood playing on shore
• Pilot looked down


  Turned the plane around and came back from mission
• Pilot returned from mission


  Filled with shame at his actions
• Pilot returned


  His wife never spoke to him again or even looked at him, everyone treated him as shameful, his children also eventually learned to be silent and treat him as if he wasn't there
• This was not the man they had once known and loved
• Pilot's inner conflict


  Between cultural military and national expectation that he would commit suicide as a kamakazi pilot, and the pilot's own desire to return home
• Beatric Garland


  • Born in 1938 in Oxford
  • Works in the NHS as a clinician and teacher
• Tight structure of poem


  Reflects tight control of military and national expectation
• Free verse and enjambment

  Reflects the freedom the pilot wants to have, the contrast between his personal thoughts and sense of national duty
• Tuna fish


  • Described as the 'Dark Prince', muscular and dangerous
  • Most powerful character in the poem
• Tuna fish


  Suggests true power belongs to nature, humanity's efforts are futile
• The message is the realization of how minute and unimportant human life is when contrasted with the vast array of nature
• 1. ‘Enough fuel for a one way journey into history’

  2. ‘Strung out like bunting on a green-blue translucent sea’

  3. ‘Gradually we too learned to be silent and to live as though he had never returned’ / ‘He was no longer the father we loved’

  4. ‘They treated him as though he no longer existed’ / ‘He must have wondered which would have been the better way to die’