1. Welcome back! Parents’ Evening: Thursday 8th November
After-school study club: next week – Tuesday and Wednesday – ‘Sign of the Four’
This half term:
1. Poetry essay
2. Five weeks revision on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and English Language Paper 2.
3. Two weeks of trial exams.

2. Essay title
Compare the ways the poets present ideas about the power of memories in ‘Kamikaze’ and one other poem from ‘Power and Conflict’. Home Learning: revise the notes on ‘Kamikaze’ and ‘The Emigrée’. Learn at least three quotations from ‘The Emigrée’. Due: Monday 5th November

3. Essay title
Compare the ways the poets present ideas about the power of memories in ‘Kamikaze’ and one other poem from ‘Power and Conflict’. Home Learning: revise the notes on ‘Kamikaze’ and ‘The Emigrée’. Learn at least three quotations from ‘The Emigrée’. Due: Tuesday 6th November

4. Use of the third person distances the reader and the daughter from the father and his actions. Creates the sense that it’s impossible to understand his intentions.
Japan is known as the ‘land of the rising sun’: a link to the father’s homeland and to dawn – ironically, for him, a new beginning.
Her father embarked at sunrise with a flask of water, a samurai sword in the cockpit, a shaven head full of powerful incantations and enough fuel for a one-way journey into history
Context: soldiers shaved their heads as part of a ritual to demonstrate their readiness as well as remaining dignified, even in death.
This line suggests that the pilots have been brainwashed, reciting patriotic propaganda to convince themselves to carry out their duty.
The line almost sounds pleasant and suggests a sense of achievement and pride at making history
Compound adjective has a finality, emphasising that this is a journey of death, reinforced by the use of enjambment.

5. The woman speculates about his change of heart
The woman speculates about his change of heart. He has no voice in the poem. His thoughts remain unknown.
The conjunction ‘but’ changes the tone of the poem
but half way there, she thought, recounting it later to her children, he must have looked far down at the little fishing boats strung out like bunting on a green-blue translucent sea
The simile emphasises the beauty of life, contrasting with the destruction of his intended mission. Irony: these small boats distract him from his true focus – the destruction of large, enemy boats.
Garland’s use of the modal verb suggests that the woman is trying to justify or rationalise her father’s actions.

6. The repeated fricative (‘f’) and sibilant (‘s’) sounds reinforce the smooth motion of the fish and the majestic beauty of nature: ‘the dark shoals of fishes/ flashing silver as their bellies/swivelled towards the sun’
The simile reminds us that a flag is a symbol of national identity. It might suggest that his thoughts are, or his loyalty is, wavering.
and beneath them, arcing in swathes like a huge flag waved first one way then the other in a figure of eight, the dark shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun
The adjective ‘dark’ underlines the sinister nature of his intentions, which lurk beneath the surface like the fish beneath the water’s surface.
Swivelling = movement of a kamikaze plane/pilot as it attacks a target.

7. Cairns – piles of stones/pebbles that act as a memorial or marker (safety/direction for walkers)
The focus switches to the pilot’s memories of his childhood.
and remembered how he and his brothers waiting on the shore built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles to see whose withstood longest the turbulent inrush of breakers bringing their father’s boat safe
The extended metaphor might symbolise the pressure that the pilot feels to do his duty, on the huge sense of guilt that he may be feeling.
The repetition of ‘safe’ in consecutive lines reminds us of the danger of his mission and how he will leave his children with the painful memories of losing him.
Garland’s use of enjambment and the lack of punctuation in this stanza might imply how engrossed the pilot is in his childhood memories.

8. The use of dashes and italics represents the interjection of direct speech, as if the mother is answering a question from her children.
Her comment shows the four generations of this family in the poem, implying that the pilot’s decision has a profound effect on his family, as well as on him.
– yes, grandfather’s boat – safe to the shore, salt-sodden, awash with cloud-marked mackerel, black crabs, feathery prawns, the loose silver of whitebait and once a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.
The listing of the marine creature, reinforced by sibilance reflects the beauty and abundance of life in nature which contrasts with his deathly mission.

9. The poem’s volta, denoted by the preceding stanza’s full stop, the switch to the first person and the use of italics.
The sense of shame is pervasive: evident in wife, family and community.
And though he came back my mother never spoke again in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes and the neighbours too, they treated him as though he no longer existed, only we children still chattered and laughed
Garland’s use of these verbs underlines how joyless the father’s life would become.
The use of enjambment here illustrates how even the children ostracised their father.

10. The use of the verb ‘learned’ suggests that the pressure of society changed the children’s reaction away from their natural inclination to love him.
The modal verb ‘must’ creates a bond between the pilot and the narrator. There is a hint of desperation in the tone as though the narrator wants the reader to also show him mercy.
till gradually we too learned to be silent, to live as though he had never returned, that this was no longer the father we loved. And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered which had been the better way to die.
The switch back to the third person and the use of a final sentence underlines the separation between the pilot and his family.
The use of reported speech serves to further emphasise this distance.
Literal and metaphorical death are considered here: the immediate and honourable death in war versus the slow, alienating social ‘death’ of being ostracised shamefully by the community.

11. Form and structure
Form: For the most part, the poem is narrated in the third person, through the reported speech of the pilot’s daughter, although her voice is heard in ‘Kamikaze’s’ later stanzas. The use of the third person underlines the distance between pilot and daughter, and the lack of the pilot’s voice reflects how he has been cut off from society. Structure: the first five stanzas provide an imagined account of the pilot’s flight by his daughter. These stanzas form one sentence. The end of this sentence represents the return of his plane. The final two stanzas focus on how his family and society shun him.

12. Compare the ways the poets present ideas about the power of memories in ‘Kamikaze’ and one other poem from ‘Power and Conflict’.
Introduction:
Recycle the question
Compare the two poems
Outline the different aspects of the powers of nature that you are going to explore in your essay.

13. Compare the ways the poets present ideas about the power of memories in ‘Kamikaze’ and one other poem from ‘Power and Conflict’.
Introduction: ‘Kamikaze’: The memories of the pilot’s childhood imagined by his daughter The memories of the daughter as a child when her father returns from his aborted mission. ‘The Emigrée’: The speaker’s vivid memories of her former city. How the power of those memories grow and solidify as time and new experiences threaten them.