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POPPIES ANALYSIS
Hello and welcome to another tutorial video. What we’re going to be looking at now is
the poem ‘Poppies’. So we start off with enjambment and that’s really powerful here
because it allows us to get into focus on words. So here we’ve got ‘steeled the
softening’ for example. The enjambment there allows us to really hold on this point, the
alliteration here helps but we might come to that in the language. It allows us to really
focus on the fact that she’s trying to hold this together before we move on and then thinking
about her holding it together and then the kind of face she’s trying to put on is quite
important and this associates with the word ‘brave’ that we actually see her use of
herself later on. So it’s all part and parcel and well merged but the enjambment there really
focuses on it. And then a little later here for example with the word ‘traced’, the
enjambment there is really powerful as well because it gets us to hold on this word and
look as she’s looking at the memorial.
So secondly we’ve got the four stanzas in the structure which represent stages and reveal
of emotions, so the stages you can first of all see them, are her with her son, her with
memories of her son, her letting her emotions become realised and then her looking at other
peoples’ pain, but in terms of the reveal of her own emotions, here we actually see
she’s trying to just go about her day as she should, doing the right thing for her
son. Here we actually see her thoughts and feelings becoming more evident as she has
this memory here with the Eskimos, remembering when they were little, and then we have her
actual emotions coming out in this part here – ‘went into your bedroom, released a
song bird from its cage’ – which just shows how overwhelmed she was and she’s
finally letting out how she actually feels, or whatever way you can envisage. And then
later on she’s got the emotions when she’s actually looking at other peoples’ loss
and sadness and then just sitting there hoping and praying that her son comes back to her,
etc.
Some people say that they look at this and they feel that her son as died as well in
this, but I think the actual way it starts with regards to time, that this is specifically
on this day, this has happened, the son leaves on this day. I don’t think there’s enough
time for the son to actually die between there. But if you feel that reading where this is
about her dead son as well, then obviously if you can justify it, go for it.
So the last thing I want to mention for structure then is the switch from ‘them’ to ‘her’.
So in these first two stanzas, we’ve got this representation of different parts of
their relationship both in memory and in actually what’s going on, the mother just tidying
him up and wishing him all the best before he goes. And then we’ve got the last two
sentences just about her and how she actually feels about it, so there’s a really interesting
contrast there going from the almost image, or the portrayal that we have of this, then
going into the psychology of it; how the mother actually feels.
So we move onto meaning then and the first meaning that we have obviously is dealing
with worry, the idea of the family and the stresses that they are under when this happens
and this comes through very clearly to us when she lets out her emotions here and when
she puts her hand on the war memorial, because looking at these two things shows us the mother
and then obviously family suffering for all the people that are actually on that wall.
We also have the idea of what war brings in terms of the death and that’s put straight away
in the poppies because that’s what we’ve come to associate with obviously, in the title
as well, it’s called ‘Poppies’ and we’ve got them referenced there, etc., and we’ve
got it again as she – again some of the items already mentioned – when we go to
the church, skirting the church walls, we get this idea of death and also ‘my stomach
busy making tucks, darts, pleats’; so all the physical representation there of her worry
in her stomach because she knows that her son might end up amongst these grave stones
that she’s actually looking at at the moment. So that again ties into the idea of death
and it being a worry and a fear for her. So those two are quite linked but in slightly
different ways.
The third thing we look at is obviously bravery, that bravery is important because we’ve
got the soldier here with his upturned collar, pristine and ready to go off into war, so
he’s very brave doing that. But then she actually says of herself ‘I was brave to
actually allow you to go and to help you when I’ve got all these fears and worries in
myself and everything upsetting me’, so the idea of bravery not just of the soldier
but of the extension of the family members who support and encourage, etc. is really,
really important.
I was actually having a discussion about this with an American gentleman the other day and
we were just discussing some of the wars that America had been in and he’d said ‘look,
a lot of people don’t support the wars but we sure as hell support the American troops’
and that kind of reminds me of that. The actual situation itself is secondary to the actual
support and the bravery and the love and care and the just general – I guess I can only
call it – raising up of the military personnel, etc., etc. and to do that you have to put
on a brave face because this isn’t something easy that soldiers go into etc. So that’s
really highlighted in the fact that she actually mentions it to herself there and we have an
example of exactly how she did it just there, especially in contrast to what she wanted
to do.
And the other meaning, theme or idea that comes through to us is the sharing in others’
grief and that really comes a little lower down when we look at the breakdown on this
with regards to how she feels after looking about, especially when she leans against it.
And obviously the line of a wishbone, how she’s actually kind of set herself against
it; is that mothering? Is that natural? Is that making a link? Is that making a connection?
Is that protective? Is that something that can be broken really easily? The word ‘wishbone’
there can really be analysed quite full on if you wished. But the physical effects are
noted here as well in how it actually affects her stomach.
So moving onto images, we’ve got the image of the graveyard and we’ve got the image
of the mother in it; I think that’s really powerful just looking at her hand there, tracing
the images. We’ve also got the image of the mother and son mature, you know when she’s
actually dressing him here, pinning him to the lapel, making sure he looks the part of
this proud soldier and then this little childish connection that they had and she wanted to
actually treat him that way and obviously that’s a reference in some way to protection
or the love that she wants to show, but maybe she can’t do it because first of all there’s
the seriousness of the situation that he’s going to go off into war, but second of all
because it just would be a stark contrast to how he wants to be treated as a grown soldier.
But who knows? Maybe the son here actually feels the same thing. Maybe he does just want
his mum to treat him like a kid again and it’s about the unsaid things as well and
I think it’s a really powerful image.
We’ve got the dove that comes through a couple of times here and here and I think
that is quite representative of peace and maybe peace with oneself. So here when we
see it in this part, it’s to do with she can be at peace in herself in being honest,
she doesn’t want to put on airs or graces or anything, she’s just let herself be free
and just feel what she’s feeling and go and analyse one of her darkest fears and what
she’s thinking of. And then down here when the dove pulls against the sky and she’s
watching it, that gives her maybe a little bit of hope, a little bit of an idea of something
good could actually happen and that’s why she hopes to hear the playground voice again,
just letting that memory go into something better, letting it go into something warm.
Then we’ve got the image of the poppies obviously. The poppies and what they represent
in terms of commemorating the fallen, etc. That one’s quite obvious and you can take
it from the name of the poem as well.
So looking at language then; well a specific word I want to focus on is ‘spasms’, I
think it’s a brilliant word here because spasm can obviously refer to a little pain
that you might feel but it’s also kind of a little explosion of, in a positive sense,
so you get these little explosions of red paper around it and the idea of the explosions,
just little kind of bursts of something, they can remind us of the sporadic explosions or
something that just kind of bursts. And the idea of tying it to the red there, the red
of blood, could also be tied into that, with death, and this is obviously what’s on her
mind, at the back of her mind. And looking at the paper there, with that description,
which I think it’s just great, especially with the word ‘spasms’ which can also
be taken in terms of the way she’s trying to hold herself, but we imagine when she’s
doing this maybe she can’t do it flawlessly, there have been little spasmodic momentary
lapses where she maybe has to hold back a tear or kind of bite her lip or something
that just shows her true emotion and feeling in that.
We’ve also got the language of the word ‘brave’ when used to refer to herself
and I think that’s really important because though he goes out and is considered brave,
she psychologically has to be brave first and foremost. So the interesting way of seeing
bravery being internalised, rather than externalised, is definitely worth analysing.
We’ve also got – even though I haven’t mentioned it there – we’ve got the alliteration
mentioned here – ‘steeled the softening’ – which really emphasises how hard she was
actually trying to hold it together.
And we’ve got another two words I wanted to analyse. We’ve got the bedroom and the
cage, ‘after you’d gone I went into your bedroom, released a song bird from its cage’.
I thought there was an interesting contradiction in this because some people when their children
die, they leave their bedrooms as some kind as testimony to them, they leave it in exactly
the same way it was and that’s how they kind of live and have things. So in saying
that ‘after you’d gone I went into your bedroom, released a song bird from its cage’,
‘I let all my emotions out’, etc., on another level in another way had gone into
the bedroom here which might one day become a cage, a cage of emotions, a cage of feelings,
a cage for her; she can’t actually let herself out of it if the worst happens to her son.
And I just thought even though that’s an extension, you have to make a couple of connections
to get there, even though it’s an extension it’s worth highlighting because of the idea
of what’s being held back and what’s being let go throughout the poem, and the idea that
going into the bedroom here for some kind of solace to let something out, whereas later
on it might be something that traps her and holds her back, is really interesting.
So the effects on the reader then? It gets us thinking about sacrifice, maybe the mothers
and fathers who sacrifice their children. The soldiers who sacrifice themselves, etc.
It gets us thinking about the links of family and how hard it must be to let go of someone
like that and to let them go off and do what obviously needs to be done and what they want
to do in many cases. And we’ve got to look at how much that would play on emotions and
make people sad, etc. And lastly we’ve got the hidden emotions and the fronts people
put up, like the mother is actually trying to put on here and maybe the soldier is putting
on as well. And then what happens when they actually come down and I think that’s really
relevant, not just to people who go off to war but that’s everyday life, the fronts
people are putting on and the hidden emotions, how they’re really feeling. It’s an excellent
poem. 1