Originally War Photographer Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question Originally War Photographer

Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question Subject: Duffy describes a personal experience: leaving her home in the Gorbals, a poor area of Glasgow, and moving with her family to live in England where, gradually, she became part of a new community, losing her Scottish accent and some other aspects of the Scottish culture she possessed originally. Subject: Duffy describes a war photographer developing spools of film back home in the safety of rural England. The photographs are harrowing but only a few will be chosen for a Sunday magazine but will elicit only minimal emotional reaction from readers who are busy relaxing. Meantime the war photographer flies out to another war zone.

Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question Points of Comparison Adults looking back and reflecting: the war photographer on recent experiences abroad while taking pictures in a war zone; poet herself on childhood experience of moving south and becoming assimilated into new community. Cities: “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.” War zones around the world - in Europe, Middle East, Far East respectively. Glasgow not mentioned by name but “skelf”, Scottish dialect word, indicates poet’s Scottish origins. Concept of home: Home for the war photographer is “Rural England.” Home is safe: “simple weather” rather than “nightmare heat” of where he has been working, plus “fields” here “don’t explode beneath the feet / of running children”. Home for Duffy is in “own country”, Scotland rather than England, a place much missed on leaving: “My brothers cried, one of them bawling Home, / Home”; somewhere that is “the right place” but lost to her along with its “river, culture, speech”.

Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question Points of Comparison Strangers: To the war photographer, people who are subjects for his photographs, suffering terribly and dying but not known to him personally: “a stranger’s features” and “running children”, not identified as individuals. To Duffy they are unidentified “big boys” and “the rest” of the pupils “in the classroom” in her English school when she is living “where no one you know stays”. Forgetting: The readers of the “Sunday’s supplement” which will publish some of the photographs will hardly remember them by the time they are having “pre-lunch beers” because they “do not care” about events far away which don’t directly affect them and only make their “eyeballs prick / with tears” rather than weep outright. After describing how difficult it is to leave home and move to somewhere totally unfamiliar, Duffy says “But then you forget” about the place one originally comes from or “change” to fit in to the new environment.

Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question Points of Comparison Travel / Journey: The war photographer travels by “aeroplane” to trouble spots across globe: “Belfast” in Northern Ireland, “Beirut” in Lebanon and “Phnom Penh” in Cambodia where he sees “blood stained into foreign dust”. His stay abroad is temporary. Duffy travels only from Scotland to England but sees it as a journey “from our own country” into a foreign land. Duffy’s move is permanent. She also describes process of growing up as “an emigration”, a moving to unfamiliar territory. Children: In war zones innocent children are in mortal danger where “fields” concealing presumably landmines or bombs “explode beneath the feet / of running children”. In Originally children are upset at moving - her “brothers cried, one of them bawling” – but are safe with parents who feel “anxiety” and care for them while they adjust to their new home.

Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question Identity: The photographer is identified only by job title; his subjects are nameless “running children”, a dead man whose “stranger’s features” are seen as film develops and “this man’s wife”. The anonymous readership of the Sunday magazine is identified simply by the definite article: “The reader’s eyeballs prick / with tears”. Loss or change of identity is a major theme in Originally. Identity is linked with place: “our own country”; “the city, / the street, the house”; “the river”; plus the “culture, speech” associated with that particular place. Moving to new place initially entails desire to hang on to original identity: “I want our own country, I said”. Eventually, assimilation in new environment inevitably involves loss of old identity, including loss of accent and dialect: “my tongue / shedding its skin like a snake”.

stanza or line structure Comparing and Contrasting Duffy Poems for National 5 Scottish Texts Question NB! These notes simply point out comparative ideas – don’t forget to study your own more detailed notes or annotated copies of the poems to revise techniques used to convey the ideas, such as: stanza or line structure punctuation word choice alliteration assonance simile metaphor juxtaposition oxymoron onomatopoeia dialect connotation personification etc