smile-poetry-analysis.pdf, Study notes of Poetry

Download smile-poetry-analysis.pdf and more Study notes Poetry in PDF only on Docsity! POETRY ANALYSIS Aim: to understand and apply SMILE and develop meaning.  For people to express themselves  To share a thought  To comment on something that happened  To share pain/ wonder/ happiness  To raise awareness  To make others laugh  Etc etc etc Umm... There is a lot to remember but it certainly is not ‘crap’.  The GCSE is set up to inspire and educate you. Such as raising awareness of how unequal society can be in ‘Two scavengers..” or how terrible oppression is through ‘Not my business.”  Though it might not seem ‘cool’ , anyone with a brain can see these are important issues, powerfully put. You may not like all of them, but some will definitely have relevance to you.  Yes!  But rather than sit and philosophise about it – you have to be prepared to write an essay on it all.  Though it might seem intimidating – all you have to do for success in this part of the paper is...  See a dentist, but don’t worry for now... It’s not that kind of smile. SMILE stands for:  Structure  Meaning  Images  Language  Effect on you Analyse all these areas and you’ve covered all the things the examiner is looking for that we mentioned in slide 4. (Now stop grinning and take a look back to that slide) Meaning.  You have to know what the poems are about in an obvious way and a deeper way.  So ‘Half-Caste’ is about identity and racism, but it is also about the root meaning of words (half- caste= half-made), ignorance, standing up for yourself, political correctness etc. What the poet makes you see in the situation they put you in. Basically what they bring to life.  So in ‘Not my business’ we see someone get ‘beat’ and ‘stuffed’ into a car as well as a house being woken terrifyingly as it is ‘booted’ ‘awake’ while the whole time the guy watching is holding a ‘yam’ close to his hungry ‘savouring mouth’.  By describing it in this way, we can imagine it a lot better. The images feed our imaginations.  You’re right.. It is a bit, but the specific words can be analysed for effect as well as the image they proved. So ‘boot’ ‘awake’ shows us the violence and shock involved.  Language also refers to the techniques used to make the lines more powerful or memorable.  Keep an eye out for – personification, alliteration, metaphor, oxymoron, hyperbole, etc etc. Not quite – it refers to the effect on you. What does the poem get you thinking about, or make you feel.  You might empathise with a character, understand their point of view and generally agree or disagree with anything mentioned in slide 1 – where we looked at why poets write poems.  You could do that- but SMILE helps you unlock the poem, ordering it properly is how to get high marks. The best way to do this is by thinking of Meaning as the most important part with all the rest contributing to your understanding / emphasizing the meaning. M I S L E  They support M, I have no ideas about letters falling in love. But basically M is the writer’s main message and all the other points are elements to help get that point across.  Kind of like if M was the structure of a house – then L would be doors, S would be windows, E would be carpet and I would the furniture; or something equally cheesily metaphor based. Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. It is also about racism as the whites have a fancy ‘brash’ restaurant while the blacks have ‘a working man’s cafe. It is also about anger as he says his ‘hands burn...for a bomb’ showing he wants to change things even by violence.  True – but it is not high level writing. For that you need to, first of all, mix the analysis points. So in the last slide we used M. Now lets try M and S:  Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. (M) We are also shown the idea of going back to the past as the last line of the poem and the title are the same ‘nothing's changed’ showing the reader we have not progresses at all from where we started.(S)  So this is how we start building our paragraphs!  Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. (M) We are also shown the idea of going back to the past as the last line of the poem and the title are the same ‘nothing's changed’ showing the reader we have not progresses at all from where we started.(S) The idea that the inequality and oppression have always been around is represented clearly through the line ‘it’s in the bone.’ This refers to the natural order of inequality in South Africa, and that regardless of the changes that we supposed to happen under Mandela, the status of black people is the same; they are still unequal. (I) Good... You’ve got it! Always try to develop your analysis points using different parts of S.M.I.L.E.  Same way you started writing a paragraph  Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. (M) We are also shown the idea of going back to the past as the last line of the poem and the title are the same ‘nothing's changed’ showing the reader we have not progresses at all from where we started.(S) The idea that the inequality and oppression have always been around is represented clearly through the line ‘it’s in the bone.’ This refers to the natural order of inequality in South Africa, and that regardless of the changes that we supposed to happen under Mandela, the status of black people is the same; they are still unequal.  And now use a linking word or phrase to get the comparison going E.g. :  Similarly – in the same way – we also see this in – this idea is shows again in... Etc...  On the other hand – we see a difference – conversely – but the other poem – however... Etc...  (continued from paragraph)... the status of black people is the same; they are still unequal. Similarly there is inequality evident in ‘Two scavengers...’ where we see the ‘beautiful’ people being in a far better position than the ‘scavengers’. (M) The images are also very powerful ‘like some... Gargoyle’ showing how ‘ugly’ the bin men seem to the elegant couple. (I) Good start!  It should do – it’s a process... Like anything if you know the process you can understand how it works and how to do it. You couls plan like this:  Poem A Poem B M Sim M  I Dif I  L Sim L  E Sim E  S Dif S