Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Power and conflict anthology (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'
- 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'
- 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'
- 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'
- 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'