The Emigree

• How is Identity presented in 'The Emigree'?

  • Has emotional significance
  • Seen in a positive light
  • Could be forgotten
  • Cherished
  • Causes internal conflict
  • Is taken by higher powers
  • Evokes longing
• 'I am branded with an impression of sunlight'


  • The speaker has an almost dream-like picture of the past or it could represent the speaker’s pride in her homeland – she is shining a light on her city.
  • Metaphorically she is saying that she remembers only positive things. However, the word ‘branded’ could suggest that she has been physically disfigured by her experiences.
  • The poem is predominantly in free verse with no rhyme or rhythm, which could represent the freeing, childlike nature of the poem; her life in her initial country before being torn away
• 'They accuse me of absence...they accuse me of being dark in their free city'


  • Feels guilt about leaving her city.
  • Contrast of dark and white to describe her city, internal conflict she feels she was not accepted in her previous home.
  • Repetition of ‘they accuse me’ is menacing and threatening.
  • ‘dark’ and ‘white’ also refers to racism: she is experiencing social rejection. She feels that she does not belong in her new city as she does not share their culture or identity.
  • Determiner 'They'--> higher powers stripped her of her identity, perhaps she is stripping them of theirs
• 'I comb its hair and love its shining eyes'


  The poem acts as an extended metaphor for a lost childhood:

  • The metaphor implies that she has a maternal relationship to the city in the way through her unconditional love and protective tendencies.
  • This juxtaposes the depiction of the narrator having naive, childlike tendencies
  • The city is personified as a doll or a pet. Its eyes shine — a reference to the sunlight — which relates to purity, and she can love it as she wishes, despite it being taken away from her
  • Iambic Pentameter: a gentle, flowing movement, almost like a lullaby.
• 'The child's vocabulary...I can't get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight'


  • 'child'- her vocabulary hadn’t acquired adult expression.
  • Perhaps she was banned from speaking their language, her entire identity. Maybe her former home was a totalitarian state with no freedom of speech.
  • Refers back to the sunlight metaphor - The language is so important and real to the speaker that she can’t not speak it; it is always on her ‘tongue’ (mind).
  • Rumens finishes with a full-stop, creating caesura, to imply that the speaker has been silenced in the way the state silences her.
• 'There once was a country...I left it as a child'


  • Poem starts as a fairytale, perhaps a motif for childhood; this is presented throughout-the picture made in her mind of the country she’s from was formed through a lens of innocence and naivety, suggesting that the place is not as perfect as the speaker depicts it.
  • Ellipsis creates a pause necessary for the narrator to gather their thoughts, increasing unreliability
  • Enjambment at ‘child’, symbolic of how the speaker’s childhood was cut short, or perhaps the speaker may have wanted to hold on to her childhood, savour her memory of it.