Both At The Border and Belfast Confetti use a wide range of vocabulary to implement an obvious conflict-themed story, but in a poem form, so noticing and comparing them both is easier than a lot of other poems that would use a range of metaphoric phrases and words. The poems are very literal, almost straight to the point, which I believe aims at making the reader want to really imagine it in his/her head.

At The Border first of all is a very soft poem, as in it is not full of sudden actions like Belfast Confetti portrays itself. The first stanza was very short, but it told us that it was the last time the protagonist would check-in wherever they were, meaning that they were leaving for somewhere, which we later find out to be their home country which had just been holding as war (sign of conflict). Later in the poem, a joke is also said, by a small girl, who’s related to the protagonist. This makes me confident that there is no current conflict going on, but rather they have been ‘affected’ by previous conflict. The line was ‘Look over here , she said to us, my right leg is in this country and the left on is in the other’.

Belfast Confetti is a poem of the complete opposite approach. This poem is one that is in the process of fighting, conflict and violence. They are more riots than war, but it seems to be very intense and shows how one innocent man really can’t escape how hard he tries, ‘Why can’t I escape~? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street. Dead end again.’.  The poem is very blunt, literally describing what was going on around him and how badly the conflict was. He was also very confused in the last paragraph, which tells us that he was very confused.

Why is the poppy used to remember the English fallen soldiers?

The reason I think poppies are used is because of the color mainly, representing the blood shed people went through. There are plenty of them which shows that many people had sacrificed themselves for their patriotism and the urge come out victorious. The poppies are also used because they were the plants that surrounded the victims of war, which is a good use of tribute, which’ll make it easier to remember what they actually are signifying.

How does the poet present desperation in Out of the Blue?

– First and Second person 

Make sure – 

How have structural choices made by the poet enhance our understanding of the themes explored in the poem Hawk Roosting?

Ted Hughes has used a significant range of structural techniques to implement different  opinions towards the main character. This has worked very well considering many people had the same feeling about the arrogant representation of the hawk. The poem centres around a bird, who is portrayed as very conceited and arrogant.

During the short course of the first stanza, we notice that even though the poem is in first person, the main subject is about the bird, making the text already seem very self centred. This was our first glimpse of who the bird was and how he carried himself. Another technique that is present during this stanza is of the power and

Essay Question: Compare the ways poets show how conflict and war can affect feelings about a place in ‘At the Border 1979’ and one other poem from Conflict.

Emotions were very important whilst studying the difference between both poems.

‘At the border’ was a poem that had created a sense of fear and the urge to escape within the characters. This is a key consequence of war. Many people over the world constantly have to move from country to country looking for a safer place to make a living for them and their children. The poet was very smart by using this type of situation to  create a feeling of happiness and glory after what was to be described as a land that was less beautiful than what was ahead. The fourth stanza was quite important considering it described most about the country that they were just in, which was Iran. The paragraph stated ‘My mother informed me: We are going home. She said that the roads are much cleaner, the landscape is more beautiful and people are much kinder. This was crucial in making the war sound like they had not had much happiness. In much cases, migrating from a war can be very pessimistic or unhappy, but in this case the scene was described so positively that the reader would think that the asylum seekers would want to go back to their home town. This is where the poem changed very much and it took a turn, unlike Come On Come Back.

‘Come On, Come Back’ was a poem that would create relief, but at the same time sadness, because of the lack of human activity and the hint that someone had died, following what had previously happened.The poem was much less like a story (At The Border), but had described the event that had occurred just after a battle. The poet also made the mood quite melancholy by describing how Vaudevaue (the girl) was alone, just tapping her finger, it seemed as if she was awaiting her death. The whole feeling of this had no excitement or happiness, it was just very dull and tranquil in the environment around the two characters involved. The reason I mentioned that the poem created relief, was because the war was over and the girl was moving, but very sporadically. This poem would much more play with the reader’s emotions way more than At The Border, which was quite forward to capture thee feelings expressed by the author, or how he wanted to express the character’s feelings.

All in all, I believe there is a massive contrast in the way both these very war-stricken poem have used feelings. Both have some similar value but in the very end, those value either had nothing in common anymore or they had changed in emotion. One in the end was clearly happy and the other was quite sad. They were quite different in context and they also had completely different movements in them, which also separated them from each other.

How does the first stanza set the scene for Vaudevue’s death? Think about language used.

The first stanza sets a scene of death clearly by the word play throughout the whole paragraph. The phrase ‘left by’ indicates that the main character in the first half (the girl) was not guided by herself, but in fact she was left by the battle that had previously occurred. This that there was no sense of awareness and she was left to die. Throughout the poem, she doesn’t make any sudden movements, which also indicates a sense of weakness that can relate to the death of this girl. Being alone is also another factor we can use when asked how the poem is linked to death. Both characters in the poem are very isolated, which is a sign of loneliness or death.

The poem’s subtitle is ‘Incident in a future war’. What features of the poem fit in with the idea that it takes place in the future?

Imtiaz Dharker has showed a strong representation of discrimination in the poem ‘The Right Word’ which is clearly a very blatant way to blur the reader’s observation as to how the person feel in the poem. I think she has also expressed the consequences and effects of conflict in a much stronger way by balancing each stanza to a different interpretation towards the person who was supposedly trying to become a hidden presence. For example, she first construes the person as a terrorist very boldy, but then as the poem begins to unravel, she begins to lighten up on the subject, describing the person to be ‘taking shelter’ instead of hiding in the shadows

How exactly would you like your son or daughter to treat women in the future? The recognition of mysogynistic music is slowly but blatantly being looked up to by the youth of today. It’s even getting to the point where adults themselves are even promoting and lending support to the artists that are used to producing such music. I also strongly believe that if we carry on dragging the sexism based music to success, many women will also begin to feel like objects or the weaker gender.

To begin with, I would like to state that I don’t believe that the subject of this essay should be banned, but I do believe that it should have much more people having an insight on what damage it can have on the world in the long-run. Also, the fact that radio stations all over the world rely on sexual lyrics and misogyny to boost their public popularity is outrageous. I began to do a little bit of research, mainly scanning for statistics and facts that supported my statement and this is just one of the many: A 2007 study showed that exposure to rap music increases sexist attitudes towards women. I believe that this is a clear representation of how certain words repeated by popular musicians (mainly rappers) can be implemented into the mindset of young teenagers, and even young adults nowadays.

I also looked into a set of lyrics by the 13-time Grammy awarded rapper, Eminem, who is heavily known for his very ‘odd but amusing’ previous lyrics. The song was named ‘Kill You’ and a section of the lyrics caught my eye: ‘Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore, til the vocal chords don’t work in her throat no more’. Typically, I think we can all agree that this sort of language causes distress in the minds of a lot of listeners, but whilst that is one case, another is one of plenty children hearing this music and implementing it into how they think daily and how look at their peers around them. It may seem rather over-exaggerated and conspicuous, but when it comes to a situation where a child under the age of 10 begins to listen to this, they are subject to a mind of very sexually orientated thoughts, even though they are below the legal age. This is really what most of our children are beginning to think about nowadays, and parents are injudiciously looking over this.

Even though we mostly blame a lot of men for the use of misogyny in today’s music, we have to acknowledge that there are still some women (very famous ones at that) who publicize and push for more and more degrading music scenes, lyrics and lifestyles.

Subject to the last paragraph, a lot of controversy surrounded the recent release of the song ‘Anaconda’ by Nicki Minaj, an artist known for her odd dressing, and ‘talent’ in music, which I couldn’t agree with. The problem expressed by a lot of people was that the video, lyrics and the song cover really shouldn’t have been allowed on the TV, especially at daytime. The whole combination reeked of explicit video and lyric. It might as well have been classed as an adult film, with an unforgettable chorus to it. I think this should really be taken into a vast amount  of consideration because the fact that this type of music is played daily by radio shows, TV channels and kids just isn’t right and it should be stopped. Sure, people may literally get pleasure out of the rhythm and how the song goes, but it’s clearly a fact that the sexual nature of many songs like this really has an effect on people, and many of us are turning a blind eye to it.

Another point worth noting is the fact that this type of music has a massive impact on the youth of today. The subject of women has been sexualized by many and this has been a consequence of the music that is produced today. Teens today are used to the objectification of women, and it hasn’t become a rare thing now.

To counter this, I believe more focus should be put on the positive subjects of music, instead of glorifying the music that intentionally degrades males or females, whether it be in blatant or subliminal messages.

I was stuck. Stuck in something dark and had no space around me. No rush of wind hit my face which began to throw a chilling feeling over my body. As I attempted to get up, my head hit the hard object that was above my body. The only thing I had felt was the hardness of the material, as if it was pushing closer and closer to my body.

I was in a coffin. Somehow, just somehow, was stuck in a coffin with no thought of how I could have got here. Fear began to take over my body faster than it could to any other man. My natural instinct was to bang, bang the top until I felt a crack. So there I was, 7 feet under, banging as if I was a zombie coming back from the dead. For about 2 minutes I was risking my perfect smooth skin to get out of this scary place, I smacked and punched as hard as could until the tension of the wood began to give away sounds and noises of cracks being made. I felt sudden pieces of dirt rushing to my face, entering my nose and my mouth. The cracks began to widen as more dirt rushed through.

Eventually, I smashed the whole structure, not seeing anything but darkness. I quickly shut my eyes, knowing I was stuck in a bunch of dirt and gravel and began to dig up with the fingers that were not yet beginning to sting with splinters. The digging was not too long, about five minutes in, I had sighted the moonlight still in the darkened sky, which had seen no stars that nights. My head tilted down, and as I began to recognize my surroundings, I could hear the distant sounds of wolves, dogs, bears howling and growling, seeming as if they were coming towards me. The sheer fear I had in the coffin decided to come back to me. I felt so vulnerable, so alone. I began pulling my ripped converses through the heavy grass that surrounded me, and had eventually seen where all the sound had come from.

My mind was being tormented with. Definitely over 100 over-starved animals had been wandering around on a large hill, causing noises that would break the ear drums of an old man. I stood there, frozen, trying not to make a sound. I could swear to God that I weren’t on planet Earth. Nothing like this could ever happen on Earth. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing, as if they had their own senses. Suddenly, I was creeping away, not knowing that the floors had many sticks disrupting the silence the animals had put up for a few minutes or so. As soon as I felt a little bit of safety, I and my stupid conscience decided to try and sprint away from this catastrophe. And then, only the slightest sound had attracted these beasts in front of me.

In the split of a second, I could see the fire in their eyes, walking, pacing, and running, towards me. A rush of fear went through my body as the savage beasts came towards me. Within the blink of an eye, my feet were stamping the ground faster than light itself, trying to get away from this. It was right at this moment, I wished I could have stayed below in the ground. Slowly, but easily seen, the animals had grown in pace towards me, I felt the need to just panic and give up sprinting, but I couldn’t, I valued my life too much to die this way. Around me was just more greenery and bushes, I could easily be seen from a mile away. There was a sheer uproar of growling and panting behind me.

So very quickly, I felt some sort of claw rip against my leg, and right there I fell onto one leg, with only two of those beasts walking slowing towards me, with the sight of hunger and desperation. I knew I was done for at this moment. They came so close to my arm, me trembling and trying to keep my eyes close. They were so hairy, to the point I couldn’t see the shape of their body.

A second later, the fiends closer to me. This was definitely the end to me. And then it happened. They began biting me, releasing tension and anger on me, my legs were being devoured even more than they were.

I was left unconscious, in a pool of my own skin and blood.

You’re my end and my beginning – John Legend – All of Me

My names John, and I’m in love with someone, well it’s not really love people say it is, just a crush. I guess you could call it my first love. ‘I’m hurt so much because the girl of my dreams has left me for another man, so many sad thoughts going through my mind.  It’s like she’s playing me, one minute she gives me the green light, the next she leaves. My insecurities are just getting out of hand now.’

This line can be used in whilst describing Medusa because it has a similar story to it. Both of the main characters are having problems with their partners, which results in them starting to have insecurities about themselves. In both stories, both the main characters are being played by their partners, which is all we know, but they are starting to become depressed, which in Medusa, she has a worse case of depression where she threatens to turn her husband into stone. There can be many other alternatives to this song line as it doesn’t really tell us much, but it is most likely this because of the way it comes across.

If you want to compare the two stories, I think that you could say that Medusa definitely had better vocabulary and more sophisticated words were used to describe how she was feeling and what she was going through. In the song, John used simple words to describe the female he was in love with. Even though the two situations are similar, there is a difference. In the song, John describes how the girl is not really interested in him and how she would send him mixed messages, he did not really understand whether she loved him or didn’t love him, but in Medusa, her and the man in the story were definitely together, and most likely later in their relationship was when he had lost her trust and Medusa began to become insecure about herself and how he feels about her.

Also, the poem of Medusa is used with many metaphors that aren’t quite easy to understand correctly:

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy

Grew in my mind,

Which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes

As though my thoughts

Hissed and spat on my scalp.

Although there are pictures on her, the whole ‘snake filled head’ thing was just a metaphor and an exaggeration that was used to describe how she felt and all the negative thoughts she was thinking about. She describes the snakes on her head to be ‘filthy’ which means that her thoughts are not good ones.