Power and Conflict

• Romantics


  A group of artists and writers from the end of the 18th century
• Romantics

  • They rebelled against authority - the church, the monarchy, the government
  • They believed man was corrupted by power
• Romantics


  • They believed in the power of nature
  • Nature was omnipotent, and destructive, but also beautiful
  • Nature's power was something to both fear, and admire
• Heaney: 'leaves and branches can raise a tragic chorus in a gale'
• Heaney: 'We are bombarded by the empty air'
• Heaney: 'the flung spray hits the very windows, spits like a tame cat turned savage'
• AO3: Browning's inspiration for "My Last Duchess"

  The history of a Renaissance duke, Alfonso Il of Ferrara, whose young wife Lucrezia died in suspicious circumstances in 1561
• Browning was writing in the Victorian age
• Robert Browning: '"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive."'
• Robert Browning: '"My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift."'
• Robert Browning: '"I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together."'
• At that time, a large part of a statue depicting the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II was unearthed
• Egyptians were highly superstitious and believed that their legacy would continue to exist in the underworld
• Rumens: ''There was once a country... I left it as a child''
• Rumens' quote

  • Adverb 'once' / Ellipses - caesura – a memory of something destroyed by war / Child-like reflection
• Rumens: ''it may be sick with tyrants''
• Rumens' quote

  • Personification – memory is sometimes more romanticised than reality / Sickness is something that can be beaten
• Rumens: ''They accuse me of being dark''
• Rumens' quote

  • Verb 'accuse' / Adjective 'dark' – racism she now faces as a consequence of being displaced
• Rumens interested in modern examples of emigration - written after the Gulf War
• Weir wrote Poppies
• Weir's quote ‘blockade’

  • Symbolism – links to violence, death and remembrance - foreboding
• Weir: ''blockade' 'spasms' 'bandaged’
• Weir's quote “blockade“ “spasms” “bandaged”


  • symbolism - links to violence, death and remembrance - foreboding
  • Semantic field – mother associates everything with war, violence and injury
• Weir: ''play at being Eskimos like we did when you were little''
• Weir's quote

  • Aside / Verb 'play' / Adjective 'little' – creates intimate feeling memory / Juxtaposes war
• Weir wrote this after the invasion of Iraq and thought of mothers, like Wilfred Owen's, and their emotions
• Power of memory

  poppies vs emigree
• Effects on conflict:

  remains vs kamikaze
• Armitage and Garland: 'Educate the reader of the incomprehensible things that soldiers have to experience in war'
• Anecdotal / conversational tone


  • 'On another occassion' - many horrific incidents he's seen / matter of fact - used to it
• 'I see every round as it rips through his life' - remains


  Determiner 'every' and alliteration - lack of glory or romanticism in killing
• Colloquial language / verb 'tosses'


  • 'my mate... tosses his guts back into his body' - disturbing nature of what is happening juxtaposes with the relaxed language
• 'enough fuel for a one-way / journey into history' - kamikaze


  Adjective 'one-way' / enjambment - as a kamikaze pilot, he is expected to end his own life to make 'history' / enjambment mirrors his life ending
• Simile - Kamikaze


  • 'little fishing boats / strung out like bunting' - attractive temptation of life below as he flies / contrasts with the 'journey into history' expected - inner conflict
• Armitage showcases the mental isolation that soldiers experience after war


  Garland reveals how some can experience physical isolation, too
• Metaphor - remains


  • 'His blood-shadow stays on the street' - memory of war fatality lingers in his mind
• Verb 'flush' - remains


  'drink and drugs won't flush him out' - soldier uses substances to cope with his guilt / 'flush' has connotations of getting rid of something unwanted - war is what he tries to 'flush'
• Loose rhyme used throughout

  • Creates a childish sense to expose how soldiers can become numb to suffering
• Armitage interviewed soldiers who had served in the Gulf War and learned of their experiences with PTSD