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OUT OF THE BLUE EXTRACT ANALYSIS
So we look now at extract from ‘Out of the Blue’. If you haven’t seen the You Tube
version of this with verses from Simon Armitage’s poem, I thoroughly suggest you do. I think
this section is on the third video. You just put an extract from ‘Out of the Blue’
and look for the third of four. It’s awesome and very, very haunting.
So we look here; and I think just reading that it’ll really kind of set you up before
you actually try and look at this.
So first of all in the structure we’ve got a monologue and that’s really good because
it allows us to get the thoughts, the exact thought of actually what’s going on and
obviously this is really about personal perspectives so that’s really important, obviously it’s
put to us in a monologue.
The structure in the title ‘Out of the Blue’, I think that’s really interesting, it’s
got three meanings. The idea is the strike was out of the blue in terms of you weren’t
expecting it and the phrase out of the blue to do with that surprise, but that’s not
just the surprise of the tag, that’s obviously the surprise of the person living their day
with what happened and obviously out of the blue means something coming out of the sky.
So you’ve got three ways to actually extract different ideas from there.
The other structure point I actually want to mention is the questions. So we have a
question here and we have a longer question here and we have a question just down here
as well, and all of them are referencing the reader in the second person. Or basically
it could be us as reader, but also it’s maybe a person that he was highlighting on,
this person in the building, in one of the towers actually, highlighting when he actually
looked out of the window and saw. So anyway the questions really give us a kind us a real
world there in ourselves, asking us how much have we thought of the victims, but also in
terms of on the day when he was looking down, if you can imagine those people looking down,
they would have been thinking who there can help them from anyone that they saw.
Meaning then. Well obviously one of the things is about personal perspectives, thinking about
9/11 and thinking about other atrocities that happen where people are really sad casualties
and we actually look at trying to think about how they would have been, obviously the recent
incident last year in Norway springs to mind as well, just about how reading about personal
perspectives of people who survived, it’s just unbelievable. So really looking at perspectives
in atrocities is a really strong theme here and the feelings and ideas that someone goes
through to an extent, because we don’t have that many survivors’ tales I don’t believe,
from this particular atrocity.
The idea as well of things being hard to fathom. Are we really seeing what we’re seeing?
And a lot of the images you see from the day, you get that feeling but here you get the
idea of does anyone see the soul worth saving? You have noticed there is this cotton shirt
twirling and then he actually says ‘do you think it’s just a man shaking crumbs out
of his shirt or hanging out washing?’ It’s just the idea of seeing that and obviously
for so many people just the idea of what happened is just unbelievable, just to think that that
could come out just on a normal day.
And obviously we’ve got the idea coming through of the human courage. He’s trying
here to actually stay alive and he’s trying to actually get peoples’ attention here
by the fact that he’s waving etc., and everything around him is really, obviously it’s a terrible
situation and he says ‘I’m not the point of launching and leaving. I’m not trying
to surrender’ and obviously the surrender he’s talking about is his life, he’s not
trying to give, etc., etc., and obviously he tries to get peoples’ attention and get
to the window and save himself as best he can but then it doesn’t work that way. But
then we in ourselves, afterwards we know about the rescue attempts and we know that some
people were saved in the rubble, etc., etc. It just shows the human courage of what people
would actually do and how they would go about trying to save themselves and saving others.
So the images that we have. Well we’ve got the image of the shirt, the most powerful
one, especially if you remember it from the videos or if you watch the video with the
poem. The idea of the shirt there. We’ve got the white cotton shirt, this person, the
idea of white here, maybe this person’s completely innocent of any crime of execution.
Why is he there? The idea of the actual shirt, we all remember the image again. It’s really
actually interesting to try and talk about something that we have such an amazing array
of cultural references for in that sense, because obviously the images are imprinted
on us, so when we read this we know exactly what he’s talking about, we don’t actually
need to imagine it. Normally when images are presented to us, we’re getting scenes presented
to try and help us think about all of this, but that shirt coming out there and we’re
watching it twirl and the man falling, two of the most striking images from the day,
among hundreds, it’s really gives us the idea of so many things.
We’ve got the image of the height and obviously the danger that the person’s in. So the
danger that they’re in; we’ve got the heat and it’s searing and we’ve also got
the depth when he’s actually looking down from where he is in the building. It’s appalling
and it’s just shocking and it probably makes him feel sick along with everything else that’s
going on. And then the smoke that comes from it, because obviously the inhalation there
is making him more and more tired, which is one of the other images that we get, the idea
of him being weak and ultimately helpless. Because we’ve got ‘the sirens below me
wailing’, there’s all this kind of hubbub down below, lots going on, but nothing actually
coming to him, he can’t actually do anything and he’s trapped.
I think this is really interesting here, the reference here; is this a reference now or
was this whole thing a reference to the reader? Or was it a reference to a loved one that
he’s actually thinking about? And was it a loved one that he was actually trying to
hold himself together – sorry I should have put that in meanings, I’ll add it now. That’s
something that you can read into and if you look at it that way it does happen. Here it’s
like ‘does anyone see a soul worth saving?’ so it’s more directly at the reader and
the people below. But in that one ‘do you see my love?’, could that be just in terms
of someone specific he was actually thinking about? And obviously with the ‘your’ there,
it’s a specific person. So again we’ve got this ambiguity of exactly who it’s too.
You could look at it that way. So it’s thoughts to a loved one and times like that is another
one of the meanings.
So the language then. We’ve got a lot of repetition all the way through, which really
kind of just strikes how shocked the person is and how disorientated they are and obviously
as they’re talking about this. So we’ve got the ‘waving, waving’ and we’ve got
‘believing, believing’ and ‘tiring, tiring’ and it’s just again like shock
in both. The ‘waving, waving’ he’s just continuously doing everything he can to get
attention. The ‘believing, believing’ again is just talking about the peoples’
shock in how they actually feel about it and the ‘tiring, tiring’ is obviously how
his body is actually giving up because of the smoke inhalation and whatever else. So
it’s really powerful all the way through.
You’ve got alliteration right here at the beginning which just kind of gives the movement
of the shirt, it just really brings home to the movement of the shirt, that it’s twirling
and turning and it’s kind of doing both and obviously a twirl is probably supposed
to be more fancy but turning is just kind of like a more monotonous thing. Maybe he
was doing it in a certain rhythm at first and then as he goes through, his wrist just
becomes more and more tired and it’s more of a turn that a twirl. Perhaps you could
read that that way.
We’ve also got the – I think this is just a brilliant word – use of the word ‘gills’
when it’s actually talking about the – ‘here in the gills I am still breathing’, because
it’s actually a direct reference to the building and obviously the way it’s shaped
with the fascia and the outside of the building. One of them was sticking out more if you look
at the actual building, and then it’s like an indent and then out and then indent and
then out, and so it kind of looks like the lines across a fish’s gills. And obviously
because there’s smoke coming out of there, it’s the idea of them working like gills
is really, really important because that idea of the thing breathing in some way, but obviously
it breathing with the smoke, because obviously this man can’t breathe. So there’s a link
there to life and a link there to just the ebb that he’s going through, because he
can’t breathe in that situation, much the same as we can’t breathe in water and obviously
somebody turned the building into this thing, like a fish’s gills, that we can’t breathe
in. I think it’s a genius way of actually characterising that because obviously the
man can’t breathe and that’s why he’s starting to flag and tire.
We’ve got the second person reference which I’ve touched on briefly with the idea of
a loved one just towards the end, but obviously the second person reference right from the
beginning, ‘you’ve picked me out’, he’s like ‘you can see me, what are you going
to do? How are you going to get me?’ And ‘when will you come? How are you going to
rescue me?’ etc., putting us right there. And then ‘do you think?’ So all of these
are kind of really putting us in there, really trying to make us understand what it is we
think we are saying and what is actually happening. Again, it just gets us thinking about the shock of the day to day life. Like ‘do
you think you are watching?’ It’s like, ‘how could I be watching someone who possibly
could be about to jump to his death?’, whenever I personally see one of those videos, it’s
just unbelievable. In fact there’s a great documentary about the day; I think it was
done by the Discovery Channel or the History Channel; and it was just like a timeline catalogue
of the day and it just shows you all the most powerful images of the day. It was unbelievable,
there were probably about ten times while I was watching it where I was just in absolute
shock. Just remembering it all is unbelievable. So yes, the second person reference.
And obviously at the end, I think there’s one more time when we’ve got another reference
– forgive me it doesn’t actually come to me right now.
Yes, so the effect on the reader then. We’ve got the remembering of the victims and the
ordeal obviously, that’s the first thing that it actually makes us do and think about
what it must have been like at the moment when the building – there’s so many people
who still can’t watch stuff and think about this, it’s really, really…let’s hope
it’s just a once in a lifetime thing. But what happened in Norway and we’ve still
got to trust is happening.
Then obviously the shock, just the reminders of how shocking this was and peoples’ feelings
and the attempts and the life that people were actually going through. And then I know
this is probably not the most sensitive thing to say, but it just reminded you of the change,
how your life can change in a second, anything can happen. Obviously in this extent this
person’s life has changed, obviously they’re going to die and so many millions of people
were affected by what happened that day. But it just reminds you just out of the blue something
can just happen and say like anyone who is involved in a car crash or an accident or
involved in anything, so many small things can happen. Sorry I can just think of so many
things in my head that they don’t compare in any way to this, so I don’t really want
to mention them. But just that idea of just change being able to come. This poem might
get you thinking about that as well.
Yes, great poem. And again like I said, if you get a chance to watch the videos on You
Tube, the Commission Series, it’s mind blowing.
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