literature p2

• Imtiaz Dharker

  Poet, artist and filmmaker born in 1954 to Pakistani parents, brought up in Scotland, award-winning
• Imtiaz Dharker's poems

  • Focus on home, freedom, displacement and feminism
• The poem "The Right Word" was written

  2006
• The poem "The Right Word"

  Explores the power of words and their connotations
• The poem

  1. Poet tries different ways of describing the person outside her door

  2. Eventually abandons words and just uses her eyes

  3. Moves from fearfully describing the person as a 'terrorist' to inviting a child into her home
• The poem "The Right Word"

  • Written in free verse with no rhyming words and no regular rhythm
  • Conversational/colloquial style in nine separate stanzas
  • A conversation the poet is having with herself about the perceptions and connotations of words
• Names attributed to the boy in the poem

  • Terrorist
  • Freedom fighter
  • Hostile militant
  • Guerrilla warrior
  • Martyr
  • Child
• The names "freedom fighter" and "terrorist"

  Carry very different connotations
• Freedom fighter

  Willing to die, brave, principled
• Terrorist

  Willing to kill, intimidating, fearful, violent
• The word "lurking"

  Creates an ominous atmosphere
• The purpose of the rhetorical question in line 4 is
• What the poet has not got right in line 8 is
• The poet is addressing the reader in line 24
• The use of the word "outside" in the first 7 stanzas

  • Shows the poet's initial distance and fear of the person
  • The use of the word "in" in the last 2 stanzas shows the poet's change in thinking, as she invites the child inside
• The child removes his shoes when he enters the poet's house
• The door in the poem

  Represents a barrier between the poet and the person outside, as well as the barriers that media can cause in understanding
• The poem was written in 2006, five years after the 9/11 terrorist attack in the USA
• The names/words freedom fighter and terrorist carry very different connotations explain using the words willing to die and willing to kill, brave, intimidating, sacrificial, fearful, violent, principled


  a freedom fighter is brave principled and willing to die for a good cause whereas a terrorist is someone who is willing to kill and is intimidating, sacrificial, fearful, and violent.
• how does the word 'lurking in line 2 create an ominous atmosphere

  the word lurking implies something dishonest
• what is the purpose of the rhetorical question in line 4

  doubt her previous statement and searches for a politically correct description
• what is it that the poet has not got right in line 8

  poet is confused and questioning herself again trying to find the correct description or word for the person outside her home
• who is the poet addressing in line 24?

  the poet is addressing the child who looks just like her children
• the word 'outside' is used 7 times in the first 7 stanzas. In the last 2 stanzas the word 'in' is used. what does this show about the poet's change in thinking

  it emphasisng the fact that the person is still outside and in the last 2 stanzas the word in implies that the poet is no longer afraid of the person outside
• why does the child remove his shoes when he enters the poet's house? what does this symbolize?

  removing your shoes is a sign of respect (which emphasises the theme of judging a book by its cover) now the poet has erased society's judgement and prejudices and has decided on what to call the person that was outside
• explain the image of the door in the poem and how it relates to the words

  the door serves as a barrier between the poet and the person outside
• discuss the context of what was taking place in the world at the time the poem was written

  the poem was written exactly 5 years after 9/11 so during that time people of Middle Eastern descent were the main targets of discrimination as they were labeled murderers because the 9/11 terrorists were supposedly arab