Secondary Literature

I wish only boys were scared
behind bravados, for i could suffer.
I could suffer a big big lot.
I wish nobody would want to earn
the terrible burden I can suffer.

***

Past Papers - 2018 p.2

A WORLD OF POETRY FOR CSEC - Mark Mc Watt and Hazel Simmons-McDonald

EITHER

'My Parents 'and 'Dreaming Black Boy' are poems in which the speakers yearn to be accepted."

Write an essay in which you focus on this theme in these TWO poems. For EACH poem, you must describe ONE instance in which the speaker's yearning to be accepted is evident. You must also discuss how EACH speaker responds to this feeling. Finally, for EACH poem, you must examine ONE device used to portray the speaker's yearning for acceptance.

Total 35 marks

My Parents

BY STEPHEN SPENDER

My parents kept me from children who were rough

Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes

Their thighs showed through rags they ran in the street

And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.

I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron

Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms

I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys

Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.

They were lithe they sprang out behind hedges

Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud

While I looked the other way, pretending to smile.

I longed to forgive them but they never smiled.

* scroll up for Dreaming Black Boy

Essay Structure:

(i) Summary of both poems

(ii) Examples of the speaker's need to be accepted

(iii) Adjectives to describe the speaker's feelings & response

(iv) Example of the device used

August 31, 2023

Parent/Child Relationships

The Woman Speaks to the Man who has Employed her Son

Her son was first made known to her

as a sense of unease, a need to cry

for little reasons and a metallic tide

rising in her mouth each morning.

Such signs made her know

That she was not alone in her body.

She carried him full term

tight up under her heart.

She carried him like the poor

carry hope, hope you get a break

or a visa, hope one child go through

and remember you. He had no father.

The man she made him with had more

like him, he was fair-minded

he treated all his children

with equal and unbiased indifference.

She raise him twice, once as mother

Then as father, set no ceiling

On what he could be doctor,

earth healer, pilot take wings.

But now he tells her he is working

for you, that you value him so much

you give him one whole submachine

gun for him alone.

He says you are like a father to him

she is wondering what kind of father

would give a son hot and exploding

death, when he asks him for bread.

She went downtown and bought three

and one-third yards of black cloth

and a deep crowned and veiled hat

for the day he draw his bloody salary.

She has no power over you and this

at the level of earth, what she has

are prayers and a mother’s tears

and at knee city she uses them.

She says psalms for him

she reads psalms for you

she weeps for his soul

her eyewater covers you.

She is throwing a partner

with Judas Iscariot’s mother

the thief on the left-hand side

of the cross, his mother

is the banker, her draw though

is first and last for she still

throwing two hands as mother and

father.

She is prepared, she is done.

Absalom.

What is the conflict faced?

What is the mood of the poem? What is the theme of the poem? (Think of the lesson we are intended to learn.)

Explain the allusion to “black cloth” What does this mean?

List and explain two Biblical references given.

Figurative Language – Identify It

Personification Simile Hyperbole Metaphor Idiom

____1. The traffic crawled along the congested highway.

_____ 2. The city slept well the night the murderer was captured.

_____ 3. Harry doesn’t believe men landed on the moon. He is a doubting Thomas.

_____ 4. The house was small.

_____ 5. She wore a lively outfit.

_____ 6. The sky of love opened the day she met Tom.

_____ 7. Her soft skin was like silk under his fingers.

_____ 8. The messy room seemed depressed.

_____ 9. I had a big breakfast, but by lunchtime I was starving!

_____ 10. The branches of the tree reached for the sky.

_____ 11. It takes my friend an eternity to get dressed.

____12. We baked in the hot sun.

_____13. I am sick to death of greedy politicians

An African Thunderstorm by David Rubadiri

From the west

Clouds come hurrying with the wind

Turning sharply

Here and there

Like a plague of locusts

Whirling,

Tossing up things on its tail

Like a madman chasing nothing.

Pregnant clouds

Ride stately on its back,

Gathering to perch on hills

Like sinister dark wings;

The wind whistles by

And trees bend to let it pass.

In the village

Screams of delighted children,

Toss and turn

In the din of the whirling wind,

Women,

Babies clinging on their backs

Dart about

In and out

Madly;

The wind whistles by

Whilst trees bend to let it pass.

Clothes wave like tattered flags

Flying off

To expose dangling breasts

As jagged blinding flashes

Rumble, tremble and crack

Amidst the smell of fired smoke

And the pelting march of the storm.

Based on the poem, write 1 example of: simile, personification, onomatopoeia

Now it’s time to write some sentences that use figurative language.

1. Hyperbole

____________________________________________________

2. Simile (like)

____________________________________________________

3. Simile (as)

____________________________________________________

4. Metaphor

____________________________________________________

5. Personification

_________________________________________________

THE CAT

Pleasures, that I most enviously sense,

Pass in long ripples down her flanks and stir

The plume that is her tail. She deigns to purr

And take caresses. But her paws would tense

Humbly, I bend to stroke her silken fur,

I am content to be a slave to her.

I am enchanted by her insolence.

No one of all the women I have known

Has been so beautiful, or proud, or wise

As this angora with her amber eyes.

She makes her chosen cushion seem a throne,

And wears the same voluptuous, slow smile

She wore when she was worshipped by the Nile.

1. Two images of the cat are presented in stanza 1. What are they? ___________________________________________________________

2. What does the poet mean by “I am content to be a slave to her.”?

3. What comparison is made at the start of the second stanza? _____________________________________________________________

4. What final quality of the cat is stated in the second stanza?

Dulce et decorum est

Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Notes:

Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

Comprehension: Poetry

Responsibility

I half awaken

to the comforting blur of my mother

pulling on her housedress in the half dark

and already the sound of my father

as from muted dream distance

clucking the chickens to corn.

I too some distant morning

shall rise responsibly

to set my house in motion.

Meantime, I pull the covers close

and smile for the pure secret

thrill of it, and ease myself down

into that last, sweet, morning sleep.

Edward Baugh

Questions.

1. Who is the speaker in the poem?

2. The persona makes reference in line 2 to the mother being a “comforting blur.” Suggest what this means.

3. In line 4, the persona makes reference to ‘half dark.’ Explain what half dark is in your own words.

4. What, in the persona’s view, are the things that represent responsibility?

Answer the questions on the passage to determine aspects of the setting.

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Her Pepperup potion worked instantly, though it left the drinker smoking at the ears for several hours afterward. Ginny Weasley, who had been looking pale, was bullied into taking some by Percy. The steam pouring from under her vivid hair gave the impression that her whole head was on fire.

 Where is the story taking place (the location)?

 What time of year is it?

 What type of weather are the characters experiencing?

Spelling Challenge

DIRECTIONS: Read the sentences below. Underline the word in each sentence that is misspelled. Spell it correctly on the line provided.

1. I had to stay after work because there was a discrepansy with my cash drawer. ____________

2. Though they ultimately failed, it was a worthwhile endevor. __________________

3. Mark is having trouble achieving equelibrium at his new school. ______________

4. We feel like Carrie’s use of foul language is becoming exsessive. _______________

5. Ian found it difficult to extrecate himself from the situation. ____________________

6. We couldn’t believe the feasco that transpired. ________________

7. Why is Caroline so flamboyent? __________________

8. She had to go to the hospital for her frostbiten fingers. _______________

9. That statue is really grotesk. ____________________

10. Everyone knows that smoking is hazerdous to your health.

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My Parents

An African Thunderstorm by David Rubadiri

Dulce et Decorum Est

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