1. ‘Shooting Stars’ by Carol Ann Duffy

2. You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember.
How does this change your interpretation? Write down what you think it’s going to be about now?

4. The Holocaust
The systematic, bureaucratic state sponsored persecution and slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazi’s and their collaborators.

5. Not just Jews: Communists Socialists Gypsies Homosexuals
Disabled – physically and mentally.

6. Racial Superiority
The Nazi’s believed that anyone who could be labelled as ‘racially inferior’ needed to be cleansed in order to protect the ‘Ayran race’

7. Methods of killing

8. Einsatzgruppen
These were mobile killing units that carried out mass murder operations in Eastern Europe.
Large groups of people were rounded up and force to dig trenches. They would then stand on the side and where shot.
They literally dug their own graves.

9. Gas Vans
Victims were herded into converted lorries and vans and taken for a drive
The carbon monoxide produced by the engine was then pumped into the van killing all the people inside.
A long slow death.

10. Gas Chambers
The introduction of Zyclone B gas (prussic acid) allowed the Nazi’s to murder vast numbers of inferiors in a relatively short time.

11. Total estimated victims
6 million Jews
3 million Soviet POWs
2 million ethnic Poles
1 million others
Estimated over 12 million victims

12. Poem Context
‘Shooting Stars’ by Carol Ann Duffy was written by the poet as a plea to humanity not to repeat the horrors of the past. Using the first person singular a dead Jewish woman speaks to the reader about the atrocity and suffering she and her race have endured at the hands of Nazis, reliving her own death as part of the Holocaust in the Second World War.

13. TITLE: Lots of possible interpretations.
‘Shooting Stars’ is an ambiguous title referring both: to the yellow Star of David which Jewish civilians and prisoners were forced to wear as well as the temporary nature of life in the metaphorical comparison of people to meteors that we call shooting stars. The shooting star is a symbol of fleetingness of life. Just as a shooting star flashes in and out of existence in the blink of an eye so too have the lives of the victims of the holocaust been brutally cut short. Another interpretation is that a heroic person who has suffered a tragic end and is deserving of this ‘star’ in the face of adversity is being shot down. Another, more literal interpretation, is that the title refers to the Nazis soldiers shooting the Jewish prisoners, with the Star of David as the target.

14. Read and Annotate
Using your knowledge of poetic techniques and poetic form. Annotate the poem. (15mins)

15. Establishes the persona
Establishes the persona. Euphemistic way of saying that she is dead the poem reanimates her dead voice. She can speak out forever about what happened The poem gives her an eternal voice.
Verb choice “salvaged”. Suggests a human scrap heap. It is normally only used in the context of rescuing valuable objects from wrecks. By using this word in a human context, Duffy conveys that the woman’s body is in ruins as the result of her ordeal in the concentration camp.
After I no longer speak they break our fingers to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows Beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for our daughters,
The list of Jewish forenames. By proclaiming the names of the dead, their dignity is restored, in sharp contrast to the way they have been stripped of their dignity by being identified as nameless, just another star bearer. The structure of the sentence (no commas) between the names, conveys that then list is endless and effectively reflects the sheer scale of the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust.
She says there are stars of David tattooed on the prisoners’ foreheads and these provide a shocking image of target practice for the soldiers who will literally be ‘shooting stars’.

16. simile, comparing the female prisoners to statues
simile, comparing the female prisoners to statues. This further explores the atrocities visited on the victims of war and the heroic bravery of the women who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Their stoical endurance allowed them to wait for their deaths ‘upright as statues’ but there is a clear implication that they could be frozen in terror.
2nd person pronoun. Directed at the Nazis soldiers. But also implicates the reader. Perhaps, if we do not remember these events we are complicit?
upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me. You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember. Remember those appalling days which make the world forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened
Duffy uses repetition for emphasis but, more subtly capitalises ‘Remember’ at the end of the sentence as she is drawing attention to the vital nature of this memory. Also, there is a crucial need for the whole world to remember in order to avoid a repetition of the Holocaust. However, from the persona’s perspective, there is no redemptive possibility.

17. The crime of rape and the sheer terror of the woman is conveyed through Duffy’s concentration on its physical effects. “ragged gape” is reminiscent of a screaming mouth which emphasises the horror of the scene. The word “gape” is often used to describe a facial expression and this make the effacement of the woman’s identify by such brutality even more shocking
Enjambment across stanzas. Increases the tension. Implies the soldier is going to rape her.
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Between the gap of corpses I could see a child. The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.
Although it has been over 60 years since the Holocaust, Duffy points out that this is merely a matter of days in the grand scheme of time and history. The immediacy of the acts is also made apparent and there is a sense that the reader is an eye witness to them. If only ‘days separate’ one atrocity from another, then the passage of years will make the repetition of such events possible.
Man’s kindness to man: or not, as this poem shows the reader. Human cruelty is explored through this unnecessary brutal act

18. Stanza four opens posing a question already implicit in the previous stanzas. The speaker addresses the reader directly with this rhetorical question. This engages the reader by helping us imagine how we would have felt in the same horrific circumstances. Again, the suffering of the Jews is contrasted with the carefree attitudes of the Nazi soldiers.
Spring time normally symbolises rebirth, hope and a new lease of life but this is dramatically contrasted with the ultimate loss of life for the prisoners in the ‘final solution’.
How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves? My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled down my legs. I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.
The sadistic soldier toys with his victim and the short sentences at the end of the line create tension and a sense of the real experience of the woman and the power wielded by the soldier.
The internal rhyme – “trickled”, “click” and “trick” – rolls easily off the tongue, and recreate the unexpected near silence surrounding the moment. This heightens the impression of mental torture and emphasises the complete contrast with the soldier who can view such an appalling act as a game.

19. Anaphora. This stanza asks us to question how any real normality can return after such horror but also to remember that it does. Anaphora of “After” emphasises that terrible things have actually happened but are almost immediately forgotten. People soon return to normal life “tea on the lawn” just as a “boy” can wash his uniform. Clear sense that memory of “terrible moans” can be washed away and cleansed from the world just as the Jews were ‘cleansed’ from Germany and many other countries.
After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn. After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform. After the history lesson children run to their toys the world turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra…
The sibilance (producing a hissing sound) phonically represents sleeping forgetfulness, while the reintroduction of Jewish forenames reminds us that the Holocaust was real. The alliteration could also reflect the rasping noise of the spades digging up the ground and draws us momentarily back inside the concentration camp.
The ellipsis at the end of the stanza is a further stark reminder that list of names could go on and on and almost amounts to another world. There is a depressing presentation if a world that finds it easy to forget.

20. The speaker addresses the reader directly urging us not to forget the suffering she has endured. The “ancient psalms” are from the old testament and have particular significance for the Jewish community. Many psalms share themes of forbearance and strength in the face of adversity, as well as absolute faith in God as deliverer.
This takes us back to the interior of the concentration camp when the woman addressed her “Sister”. This is of cultural and religious significance than simply familial.
Sister, if seas part us, do you not consider me? Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.
This indicates her bravery and defiance as she is singing songs of her religion inside the concentration camp. She champions the culture she was born into and will not be subject to ‘ethnic cleansing’.
The woman keeps faith with her religion and tradition but her words at the end of the poem articulate the woman’s desperate view of the world. Duffy ends the poem with a quotation suggestible of anything but hope and deliverance.

21. Key Ideas The power of the human spirit under persecution
The need to remember the atrocities of the past in order to prevent them reoccurring
The experience of persecution from a female perspective