My Polish Teachers Tie

My Polish Teachers Tie

1. My Polish Teacher’s Tie explores the complexity of relationships and Carla’s road to discovery.

2. Carla Carter a half polish dinner lady at an english school begins speaking to a polish teacher in Katowice, Poland. their conversations are mainly about poetry which they are both interested in. Stefan comes to visit Carla in England on a teachers exchange scheme and this is when Carla realises they have more in common that what she thought.

3. First person narrative

4. Carla is half Polish although her name is English and no one at the school knows her background. As a child she was taught Polish language and poems by her mother. When Carla begins writing to 'Steve' he tells her about his poetry writing and sends examples of it in both English and Polish. It reminds her of the stories her mother used to tell her as a child.

5. Characters

   • Carla Carter - Carla is a part time member of a school's canteen staff, on a basic wage. She had a Polish mother who used to teach her the Polish language and Polish poems until her English father stopped it when she was six. Now she has only half memories of it all. The way that Carla speaks tells us a lot about her character in the story. Her attitude to her job and to the people she works with is quite complicated.
   • The story looks at how the social divisions separate people. It does this by contrasting characters including English teachers, Carla and the Polish teacher with the tie.
   • Valerie Kenward - Accommodates Stefan when he comes to England. She is an ignorant and intolerant hostess. She complains to a colleague, Susie, about his passion for poetry and about his foreign accent. He can't even pronounce the names of English poets correctly. Susie rightly points out that Valerie would hardly do better in Polish. "'He is Polish. I mean, how many Polish poets could you pronounce?' asked Susie." Clearly Dunmore portrays Valerie unfavourably. Carla is scathing about her and her children. She regards them as self satisfied and arrogant. And she describes Valerie as always complaining about the tea or the buns or the service.
   • The Head - presented rather unsympathetically. We see him through Carla's eyes and he is presented as bumbling, a bit foolish and insincere. When she first approaches him about the Polish address he stutters and stumbles over her name: "He stitched a nice smile on his face and said, 'Oh, er - Mrs, er - Carter'." Later he sees her and asks whether she ever wrote. Halfway through the reply he raises "his voice the way he does so that one minute he's talking to you and the next it's a public announcement." The point that Dunmore is making is that he is always just 'the Head'; he doesn't relate to people personally but to their roles. In this he is a complete contrast to Stefan.

6. Symbolism

   • Stefan's tie - individuals versus stereotypes
     • The title suggests that the tie is important, also the fact the story ends with the line "I like your tie" shows us that the tie is a key object in this story.
     • Valerie Kenward mocks Stephan's ties: "'And his ties!' 'You've never seen anything like them.'"
     • When Carla first sees him she notices his unfashionable clothing, his oversize suit and his tie. She says, "His tie was wider than normal ties, and it was red with bold green squiggles on it. It was a terribly hopeful tie." When he holds her hand and sings to her she says, "He stood there holding on to my hand right in the middle of the staffroom, his big bright tie blazing, and he sang a song I knew." The tie is clearly as unique and distinctive and, perhaps, Polish as his song. It's what makes Stefan the person he is. Carla says, "His red tie with its bold green squiggles was much too wide and much too bright. It was a flag from Poland.
   • The bird in the coalmine
     • The first poem that Stefan wrote to Carla was "about a bird in a coal mine. He sent me the English translation. This bird flew down the main shaft and got lost in the tunnels underground, then it sang and sang until it died. Everyone heard it singing, but no one could find it. I liked that poem." This is a striking image of a free creature that is trapped until it dies.
       • In some ways it reminds us of Carla. She has a song to sing but it has been silenced: silenced by her father who prevented her from learning Polish after she was six. silenced by a rigid social system that sees her as nothing but a canteen assistant so that she is kind of ashamed to admit it to Stefan
     • But, when he holds her hand and sings, she also sings. It is in a new language and she stumbles over the words but it brings back a flood of recognition: "'Good heavens. How very remarkable. I didn't realize you were Polish, Mrs... er...' said the Head as he bumbled round us flapping his papers. 'Nor did I,' I said."
     • Carla has rediscovered her roots. She is a trapped bird who has been released. The rhythm of her words expresses her excitement: "I knew it, I knew it. I knew the words and the tune. It was one of the songs my mother used to sing to me. I felt my lips move."

7. Teachers and education

   • Dunmore invites us to compare the teachers and to consider what real education is.
     • Carla's mother - She taught her child the Polish language and Polish rhymes (poems) until she was six. It is clear that, although her father stopped the teaching, Carla absorbed something that has become an important part of her identity.
     • Valerie Kenward - We can work out what sort of 'teacher' Valerie is by what she says about Stefan. She is intolerant of his interests and his accent and she seems to have brought up her own children to be self-satisfied. Dunmore portrays her as someone with a narrow outlook. What she has taught her children is of no value.
     • Valerie Kenward - We can work out what sort of 'teacher' Valerie is by what she says about Stefan. She is intolerant of his interests and his accent and she seems to have brought up her own children to be self-satisfied. Dunmore portrays her as someone with a narrow outlook. What she has taught her children is of no value.
     • The Head - He is portrayed as merely an organizer. There is not much sense that people are enriched by him or that he is a teacher in the best sense.
     • Stefan - He is also a teacher. But, when Carla calls him my Polish teacher, she is suggesting that he is a teacher in a deeper sense than just an employee within a school. She has learned deeply from him. And she has learned through his love of poetry and language, through his informal penfriend letters, and through his simple gift of friendship. She has learned that truly educated people do not stand stiffly on ceremony nor do they slot people into pigeon hole categories such as 'canteen assistant'. Stefan is a true teacher of Polish because he is enthusiastic and as vibrant as his ties.

8. Key quotes/writers techniques

   • "There was a letter waiting when i got home. I tore it open and read it with my coat still on"
     • this injects a further sense of tension into the story, shows us how important this friendship is to carla.
   • "his big bright tie blazing"
     • a metaphor combinded with alliteration has a positive, optimistic effect on Carla and the reader.
   • "the nest morning-break the buns were stale"
     • pathetic fallacy to mirror Carla's anxiety.
   • "his face looked much too open, much too alive" "his red tie...was much too wide and too bright"
     • shows how different stefan is from the other characters.