Zusammenfassung der Ressource
WAR PHOTOGRAPHER - by
Carol Ann Duffy
- CONTEXT - The imagery in line 12 seems to
reinforce a famous photo by another war
photographer Nick Ut. He took a photo of
a nine-year old during the Vietnam War.
She was running naked towards the
camera in extreme pain - her village was
hit by a napalm bomb.
- FORM
- The poem has 4 stanzas of equal length
and a regular rhyme scheme.
- It is "set out in ordered rows" like
the photographer's spools, echoing
the care that the photographer
takes over his work.
- The use of enjambment
reflects the gradual revealing
of the photo as it develops.
- STRUCTURE
- The poem follows the actions and thoughts
of the photographer in his darkroom.
- There's a distinct change
at the start of the third
stanza, when the
photographer
remembers a specific
death.
- In the final stanza, the focus shifts to
the way the photographer's work is
percieved.
- LANGUAGE
- Religious Imagery
- The references to religion make it
sound almost as if the photographer
is a priest conducting a funeral when
he's developing the photos - there's a
sense of ceremony to his actions.
- "All flesh is grass"
- "a priest preparing to intone a Mass"
- Contrasts
- The poem presents "Rural England"
as a contrast to the war zones
the photographer visits.
- "From the aeroplane"
- The grieving widow is
compared with people in
England whose eyes only
"prick / with tears" at the
pain.
- "prick/ with tears"
- Ironically, the photographer is detached in the war
zones but deeply affected at home.
- "his hands, which did not tremble then"
- Emotive Language
- The poem is full of powerful, emotive imagery which reflect the horrors
of war seen by the photographer and captured in her photos.
- "A hundred agonies in black and white"
- "blood stained into foreign dust"
- Like the photographer, Duffy tries
to represent the horror of conflict
in her work in order to make the
reader think about the subject
- "of running children in a nightmare heat"