Month: September 2015

You’re still waiting for her to finish, squealing through every note. Some godly foot stamps on the cat’s tail again and again unleashing a new round, verse, chorus or whatever the hell this is. The worst thing is that you know who should be up there performing for the crowd- cheers should rattle the tinder roof. Instead the ceiling cowers and trembles. You break a sweat when the jarred vibrations squirm through your ears to greet you. Look at the dirt and dust on this side of the curtain, or how that girl’s costume strikes your eye with sharp creases. The others must manage to distract themselves somehow, mustn’t they? Or maybe you’re the only one to feel this. Backstage tenses and flexes for a long while after the first appalling act of the rehearsal goes by. You begin to recall your whole piece now and notes bounce across your lap, of course only ringing out inside your own head. Lord help the soul who makes a noise louder than the pulse escaping their tempted mouth. The notes sustain, drop and flow to create your personal sound-scape. You pray to the musical gods of Tchaikovsky, Chopin and modern day pop trash.

A new hopeful participant enters on the endless factory line- almost a possibility of impressing, their flute glides through the hall. Now this is more like what you play for, sweet symphonies and cadences. Back when you were 9 things seemed to be pure, music and a seamless household connected. This compares with the unhinged reality of mess from the past few weeks. The percussionists strike a strange timbre and you are brought back to a tight squeeze in what was mellow silence- maybe mixed with a little humid air and a pinch of odour to complement.

He sat in the empty rows of the silently applauding audience and sighed, for at least a moment had passed from the last glance at his cheap, scratched Casio watch. He made a mental note to clean the curtain which was dirtily smudged. It must have been since the last time he washed the ancient pride and joy of the stage. Finding jobs to do in this trash-filled palace was easy enough and needed to be done to make sure the musical façade stayed intact. At worst he could scream out to anyone that could listen and express what was hidden beneath the solid concrete ground, behind the velvet curtain, trapped so dearly. He pictured the notes now, staccato and jolting, the pretty and graceful tune they once played echoed around the hall.

Dystopian:

Down to the office, staircase by staircase, tunneling through the corridors like grimy worms. Thick stone blocks any light, feeble candles show me the gloomy path to my future dread. ‘Knock knock’ the wood near makes way for two simple taps on the door. I must have only a little while left now, at least I thought.

Satirical:

The most important and fun part of my day, a light stroll down to the principals office to discuss my enthusiasm! The bones of past pupils scattered the corridor. A jolly voice greets me to join him, one day I wish to have his job. Shouting at defenceless kids sounds like a lot of fun.

Mametz wood is a poem connoting the discovery of bodies, dug up by farmers years later to disturb their peace and endless rest. Written in 2005, the piece is set long after the battle had ended and the bodies buried. The Poem has a feeling of remorse and regret for the history of mankind and our tendency to pointlessly kill others.

Metaphors are powerfully used in this piece to present the fallen soldiers as equivalent and just as important as the rubbish and debris left under the field. ‘A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade, the relic of a finger, the blown and broken bird’s egg of a skull,’ the effect is rather grotesque with every part becoming indistinguishable from one another. ‘Relic’ is used with a spiritual connotation and the ‘bird’s egg of a skull’ symbolising the fragility of life.

‘As if the notes they had sung have only now, with this unearthing, slipped from their absent tongues.’ This ending passage contains haunting similes to conclude this war poem. This seems to show an absence of mind of soul leaving the bodies to rest and give a permanent reminder to what war produces. As the message is trying to be communicated, the farmers ignore and the attempt to help the future has gone unnoticed and the soldiers have died for no reason.

Come on come back is a war poem reflecting the use of biologogical weapons and death camps used by the Nazi’s to inflict pain and harm people. By using imagery and the use of a character accepting death after a near escape the poet creates a story that visually describes the circumstances.

The overall subject of the poem presents a haunting realisation of a punishment not worthy of any man or woman. The overall feeling of the poem, in my opinion is bleak, a feeling of acceptance to death, dispair and mostly emptiness.

Semantic fields surrounding the piece provide the hidden and more complex meaning of the poem. ‘Sitting alone on a round flat stone’ has a mysterious and almost ritual like field- knowing what Vaudevue had to do. ‘A child’ and ‘an idiot’ strengthen the semantic field of acceptance and reflect back on her own life- something usually described to happen to people on death’s doorstep. She was once a child in her life and the idiot, anyone looking on the situation would think she was crazy to plunge into the ‘icy depths’ in her weakened state. They would not understand what had previously happened to make her want to do this to herself.

The authorial technique of hiding information from the reader is used and clues in the text have to be used to help the reader achieve the satisfaction- and self realisation (like Vaudevue’s) of what has happened.

Personification is used in my opinion to strengthen the thought that whatever is swallowing her up is human which could mean two things: either a religious being or that the living world have killed her, reffering to people in the world, although she wants it to be natural causes. ‘Seizing her in an icy amorous embrace’ presents the water as a being. The water is also described as ‘treacherous’ which could not be as it is non sentient.

The poem is written in the 1950s and at that point in history many war tragedys had just happened meaning we can devipher more of the text and understand the implications of terms such as M L 5 (a made up chemical) and Memel- being a coastal town in Lithuania, Nazism being popular with antisemitism apparent.

The book is titled from the main character’s name. You could call this self titling (the book being in first person) arrogant and self-centered- even before inserting the middle name of ‘God’ and plot-line of his accusation of mass murder. Already Vernon seems to be starting to become an antihero, backed by the reader but doubted by most people in the book.

‘Forget about before – even murderers are loved by their families, you know…’ Ma has the love hate relationship with her son. With absolutely unthoughtful attempts at reassuring her son (such as this one) she is a prime example of someone, even as close as she is with her Son, doubts the truth and believes the harsh allegations surrounding his involvement with the school shooting and mass murder his best friend was in. This alone could make her an antihero present in the Novel. She sticks the the main characters side all along but also doubts and gives in easily to her son’s supposed actions. Along with that she ignores Vernon’s cry for help and takes her priorities in a man making profit from broadcasting and portraying Vernon in a negative light for the public eye. Many selfish actions undertake her ability to be a hero in the story.

The Author uses speech, more particularly swearing to show Vernon in a light that is nowhere near perfect. Permanent complaints and pessimistic comments throughout the book bring the reader onto personal level with the character. Using the word ‘fucken’ (a colloquialism) a total of 407 times, a clean and idealistic view of a classic hero has simply gone down the drain. Other remarks and descriptions of ‘knife-turners like my ole lady’ use metaphors such as: ‘[spend their] waking hours connecting s*** into a humongous web, just like spiders.’ Comparisons like this show a huge amount of spite and anger towards others and portray Vernon as the antihero we are looking for.