5555360
Description
Mind Map by Maddie Carberry, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Maddie Carberry
almost 8 years ago
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The Class Game
- Subject
- The poem considers the differences in social class and attitudes arising
from this difference. This is portrayed by the vocabulary and poetic
devices uses in the poem. In particular, the reader experiences the
reaction of narrator on being judged by how they speak.
- The poem considers the differences in social class and attitudes arising
from this difference. This is portrayed by the vocabulary and poetic
devices uses in the poem. In particular, the reader experiences the
reaction of narrator on being judged by how they speak.
- Structure
- 1st person perspective – dramatic monologue exploring the
working class persona’s thoughts and feelings about being
judged on the way they speak and their social background.
The persona is from a working class background ‘we live in
a corpy’ whereas the listener is from a middle class
background ‘pretty little semi’
- The poet decided to write the poem as one long stanza to
indicate the feelings of frustration and anger experienced
by the persona. The title suggests that the division in social
class is not to be taken seriously and the persona
systematically attacks middle class prejudice towards the
working class.
- The rhythm and rhyme of the poem could suggest the
light-heartedness linking with the notion of a game. However, the
fact that the poet introduces internal half-rhyme at the beginning
of the poem ‘nose/clothes’, ‘Tara/Ma’ and rhyming couplets as the
poem progresses ‘card/yard’, ‘mother/brother’ emphasises the
narrator’s mounting anger towards the unfair treatment of the
working class.
- The short line lengths speed up the ending of the poem
to indicate the narrator’s contempt at the prejudice
experienced. The exclamation mark in ‘Well, Mate!’
enhances the defiant tone which concludes with the final
line ‘And I am proud of the class that I come from.’
- 1st person perspective – dramatic monologue exploring the
working class persona’s thoughts and feelings about being
judged on the way they speak and their social background.
The persona is from a working class background ‘we live in
a corpy’ whereas the listener is from a middle class
background ‘pretty little semi’
- Style
- The poet uses contrasting language to highlight the differences in
social class ‘bread pudding/wet nelly’, ‘stomach/belly’ between working
class narrator and middle class reader. Dialect and colloquialism are
used throughout the poem in order to make the reader ‘wince’ with
such phrases as ‘Say toilet instead of bog when I want to pee’. At the
end of the poem the narrator deliberately increases their use in order
to challenge and defy the reader’s prejudice.
- Rhetorical questions are used to involve and unsettle
he reader. The questions are confrontational and the
repetition ensures that the reader has to think about
the issues raised. The change from ‘How’ to ‘Why do
you care…’ increases the attack by becoming more
direct.
- The poet uses imagery to convey the contrast between the two classes:
‘my hands are stained with toil’ suggesting hard work contrasting with
the ‘soft lily-white’ hands of the middle class. The simile ‘stick in your
gullet like a sour plum’ shows that the narrator is fully aware of the
adverse reaction of the middle class readers when they hear her dialect
and colloquialisms.
- The poet uses contrasting language to highlight the differences in
social class ‘bread pudding/wet nelly’, ‘stomach/belly’ between working
class narrator and middle class reader. Dialect and colloquialism are
used throughout the poem in order to make the reader ‘wince’ with
such phrases as ‘Say toilet instead of bog when I want to pee’. At the
end of the poem the narrator deliberately increases their use in order
to challenge and defy the reader’s prejudice.
- Goes with Half-Caste and Parade's End
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