Power and conflict anthology (1)

Power and conflict anthology (1)

1. Ozymandias

   • The first of the three speakers is a traveller who talks about how someone (the second speaker) found the remnants of an ancient statue from the egyptian age
   • The legs and pedestal are all that remain
   • The inscription on the pedestal shows how egotistical and proud Ozymandias was
   • The statue is of ancient Egyptian ruler Ozymandias
   • This is ironic because he is actually shown as very weak compared to the power of time which has made his once-majestic statue into a ruin and his land that he ruled into a barren desert
   • Structure
     • Written as a sonnet
     • Caesura used in quotation 'who said:' which sets up the second speaker's story
   • Context
     • Europeans at the time were very interested in ancient Egyptian artifacts and travellers often took them home
   • Key quotations
     • 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone'
     • 'A shatter'd visage lies'
     • 'Sneer of cold command'
     • 'The hand that mock'd them'
     • 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works ye mighty and despair!'
     • 'Boundless and bare'...'The lone and level sands stretch far away'

2. My Last Duchess

   • The Duke of Ferrara boasts about a painting of his late wife to a visitor and remenicises about the portrait sessions
   • He calls the way she behaved 'disgraceful' and claimed that she didn't appreciate him
   • There is a hint to him possibly murdering her
   • Once he is done, he promptly returns to talking with the visitor who is revealed as a representative of a new proposed wife
   • Context
     • This was at a time when debauched men like the Duke asserted themselves
   • Structure
     • Written as a dramatic monologue
   • Key quotations
     • 'None puts by the curtain I have drawn'
     • 'Calling up that spot of joy'
     • 'She had a heart...too soon made glad'
     • 'She liked whate'er she looked on'
     • 'She thanked men, I know not how'
     • 'My gift of a nine-hundred-year-old name'
     • 'I gave commands...then all smiles stopped
     • 'Even had you skill in speech'
     • 'Notice Neptune...taming a sea horse'

3. London

   • The writer describes what it is like in London
   • The conditions are ghastly
   • The problems that are brought to the fore are: child labour, private property laws and prostitution
   • The powers at play appear to work behind the scenes
   • Structure
     • Presented very regularly
     • Strict ABAB rhyme scheme
     • Focus goes victims - institutions - victims
   • Context
     • Inspired by the French revolution
     • Blake was identified as an anarchist and questioned the ways of the church
   • Key quotations
     • 'Each chartered street... the chartered Thames'
     • 'Marks of weakness, marks of woe'
     • 'Every cry... every infant... every voice'
     • 'Mind forged manacles'
     • 'Chimney sweeper's cry'
     • 'Blackening church'
     • 'Hapless soldier's cry'
     • 'Runs in blood down palace walls'
     • 'Youthful harlot's curse'
     • 'Blights with plagues the marriage hearse'

4. Exposure

   • Soldiers are in the trenches of WW1 and fear an attack from the enemy
   • However, the weather is the most dangerous power and the real enemy
   • It is very cold
   • The soldiers are disappointed as they expected war to be heroic...
   • 'But nothing happens'
   • Structure
     • ABBAC rhyme scheme with some para-rhymes
     • Written in the present tense before moving to the future
     • Cyclical action
   • Context
     • Wilfred Owen was a soldier himself during WW1 and tragically died just days before the war ended
   • Key quotations
     • 'Merciless iced east winds that knive us'
     • 'Dull rumour of some other war'
     • 'Dawn massing in the east'
     • 'Air that shudders black with snow'
     • 'Sudden successive flights of bullets'
     • 'Slowly our ghosts drag home'
     • 'For the love of god seems dying'

5. Storm on the Island

   • The narrator talks about how people in an unnamed coastal area prepare themselves for an incoming storm
   • They feel very relaxed and confident about getting through the storm
   • When it actually arrives, they are shocked by the power and violence of the storm and they sit scared, waiting for it to pass
   • The narrator admits that they are scared of something invisible
   • Structure
     • One, nineteen long block
       • 'We build our houses squat'
     • Two halves
       • First about how they feel safe and comfortable
       • Second is how the storm brings fear
   • Context
     • May show either the conflict in Ireland's history or man vs nature
   • Key quotations
     • 'This wizened earth has never troubled us'
     • 'Nor are there trees that may prove company when it blows full blast'
     • 'Leaves and branches can raise a tragic chorus in a gale'
     • There are no trees, no natural shelter'
     • 'The flung spray hits... the very windows'
     • 'Spits like a tame cat turned savage'
     • 'Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear'