ghazal and man hunt
DESCRIPTION
This is a two hour lesTRANSCRIPT
Tuesday 21st February 2012Learning Objective:
To be able to explain how language and structure contribute to writers’
presentation of ideas, themes and settings.
Must: C Should: B Could: AStarter: Read the sheet about the poet. Highlight any information that you think is important.What does she mean by
Analysis of the poem
Task 1:Each be given a different sheet
Read and summarise the informationYou must be able to discuss this
information with someone new to inform their analysis about:
BackgroundThemes
Poetic form
Group 1: Background• Group 2: Themes
Group 3: Poetic Form
Going to Market
To be able to
explain how
language and
structure
contribute to
writers’ presentation of
ideas, themes and
settings.
A ghazal is an ancient form of poetry which originated in the Middle East, particularly Persia
(modern Iran). Ghazals must be at least five stanzas long, with each stanza being made of a pair of lines, or couplet. The second line of each couplet
traditionally has a refrain, a pattern of rhyme or similar words. Traditionally, ghazals are about
unfulfilled love – the narrative voice loves someone else, but they either cannot or do not want to return
the love.
What themes are evident in the poem/become clearer now
you have this piece of information?
Key Themes
theme of love and separation
suggestion of forbidden or impossible love
written in praise of the beloved
theme of unrequited love
beloved’s power to enchant represented
in extended metaphors
beloved portrayed as beyond reach or
unattainable
explores sexual desire of lover
spiritual elements within the relationship
lover is presented as powerless to
resist her feelings
love expressed in erotic terms
• Return to the poem, and using different colours or annotations, find each of the following. Be prepared to share your ideas in class. You have just one minute for each!
• 1. Identify what you think is the most seductive line (where the speaker is trying to persuade the beloved to return her affections).
• 2. Select the most effective metaphor or extended metaphor to describe love in the poem.
• (A metaphor is a way of describing something by saying it is something else, eg ‘the sun is a furnace’. An extended metaphor is a metaphor that continues into the sentences that follow.)
• 3. Choose the stanza or sher you think best expresses the speaker’s love and feelings.
• 4. Which is the most sexually euphemistic line? (Euphemisms are indirect or suggestive ways to describe explicit or taboo topics, such as sex.)
• 5. Which do you think is either the most romantic, or the most sentimental or clichéd line? (Clichés are phrases that have a predictable and unoriginal quality because they are overused, eg ‘you mean the world to me…’.)
• 6. Find an example of idiomatic language. (Idioms are phrases with a figurative meaning, eg ‘It’s raining cats and dogs’.)
Soldiers Wounded SoldierWhat are your impressions of both images?
What is post-traumatic stress?
Draw the images to go with the quotations
Armitage wrote the poem about this
man: Eddie
A born soldier, Eddie expected to shoot and be shot at: that’s what he was trained for. Instead, he lifted the barrier at the checkpoint to wave through the death squads.
A couple of days later, he’d be a member of the party that went in to witness the horror and clean up the mess. There are things he won’t describe, he says, because they are so horrific. To try to cure his nerves and overcome his paranoid reaction to loud bangs, he once took a revolver out into a field and fired round after round of blanks against his head.
… But, for me, the last word comes not from a man but from Laura, Eddie’s
wife. Tracing the scar of a bullet that took away part of her husband’s face, then continued pin-balling through his body, grazing his heart along the way, she describes the slow and sometimes painful process of trying to reach him, touch him, love him and make him human again.
The Manhunt
After the first phase,after passionate nights and intimate days,
only then would he let me tracethe frozen river which ran through his face,
only then would he let me explorethe blown hinge of his lower jaw,
and handle and holdthe damaged, porcelain collar-bone,
and mind and attendthe fractured rudder of shoulder-blade,
and finger and thumbthe parachute silk of his punctured lung.
Only then could I bind the strutsand climb the rungs of his broken ribs,
and feel the hurtof his grazed heart.
Skirting along,only then could I picture the scan,
the foetus of metal beneath his chestwhere the bullet had finally come to rest.
Then I widened the search,traced the scarring back to its source
to a sweating, unexploded mineburied deep in his mind, around which
every nerve in his body had tightened and closed.Then, and only then, did I come close.
http://anthology.aqa.org.uk/attachments/290.html
Chatter BoxChatterbox T H I N K
What is your overall impression of the poem?
Do you feel sympathy for the narrator? Why or why not?
Do you feel sympathy for the wounded soldier? Why or why not?
Do you think Armitage has managed to write effectively about the
situation? What does or does not work for you?
The Anthology has a section on ‘Conflict’ poetry; why isn’t this poem
included in there, instead of in the ‘Relationships’ section?
To be able to explain how language and structure contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings.
The Manhunt
Content:
What is it
about?
Language:
What types
are there?
Feelings and
Attitudes: What
are they?
Why
is it
calle
d
Manhu
nt?