5 Key Quotes War Photographer Carol Ann Duffy (2023)

Introduction

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Content

Hello and welcome to another video quickly, getting you the very top grades today, we are in the five key, quote series.

And this is my way to get you into the top grades without too many quotations I'll be going through my fuss way method and showing you how this applies to war, fertile and I'll show you how to get full marks just having these five quotations that I've highlighted we'll deal with those in a little bit of detail.

And then at the end I'll, take you through my translation of the Marke scheme.

This comes from my guide to the literature exam, which will be out next week.

Anyway, I'll take you through this to show you why it gets full marks right at the beginning of the essay you always want to write about the form.

Now, this is a really interesting form that Duffy has used here.

So she starts off with a trochaic meter and in trochaic meter.

It means a first syllable is stressed.

So in his dark room, he is finally alone.

So you can see how that stresses the first syllable, but in the next line, she swaps that to the opposite of trochaic.

It is I ambach with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

So she changes the rhythm.

Now, what that does immediately is it unsettles us.

We've got one rhythm in this one trochaic, one rhythm in that one.

I ambach and were immediately puzzled and thrown so straight away.

You've got some subject terminology, there, trochaic and iambic, pentameters and you're able to use that to talk about Tuffy's purpose, which was to unsettle us brilliant.

Well.

Now we can start to look at the individual words and show how they work.

So in his darkroom, he's finally alone, she uses symbolism here.

So the darkroom is literally the place that old film used to be developed, you know when people had spools of film.

And this was inside your camera.

You took the spools out, and you developed them in a darkroom, and you had to make sure that the light didn't get to the negatives.

So you could only have a red light in there.

Anyway, you can google that if you want, but the point of this is that's used.

Symbolically, it suggests that his purpose is dark.

So immediately we're questioning the moral purpose of the war photographer is he a dark person or only recording dark events.

Then we have this interesting idea that he is finally alone.

So he's, obviously, a loner.

This sounds like with the word.

Finally that he's really pleased at last to be on his own perhaps he's, someone who doesn't like humanity, perhaps he doesn't think men can be good because of what he's seen in wartime.

So it challenges our expectations.

Then we have another double meaning.

The spools are literally what you would call unraveling the negatives.

It was on a spool, and you don't roll it.

But we've got this idea of spools of suffering it's, a brilliant metaphor.

So each photograph conveys suffering in there.

We've got some more subject terminology.

This alliteration of the S sound is called sibilants.

And here it's a soft sound, but also sinister.

So it gives us the idea that what he's doing is sinister, not just the photographs themselves.

But being a public observer of it and not interfering.

And then if we work to the end of our couplet, the photographs are being set out in ordered rows.

But this is obviously an allusion to death because the semantic field here that we're being given is of a graveyard.

We imagine gravestones set out in ordered rows and were used to this sort of image in war cemeteries.

So we've got an image straightaway of this photographer who is earning his living through other people's death and that's, the central moral dilemma.

At the center of this poem does the war photographer profit by other people's death, or is his job because it is a male in this poem to try and prevent further deaths by exposing.

What death is really like my next quotation is a rhyming, couplet, ma, mass and grass, it's, actually a half rhyme here and the half rhyme again is a structural feature and it's there to unsettle us.

Also we have that trochaic I am Big Creek, a priest, preparing so not stressed priest stressed, preparing.

So this is iambic, but then here Belfast Beirut, pnom Peng.

Now we've got trochaic and again, she puts this two different patterned lines together to unsettle us.

Now let's, look at the alliteration of priest, preparing the consonants of the repeated peas feels quite violent.

These are called plosive sounds as in explosion, plosive so it's, a violent sound, which links us to how these people have died this.

Again is a metaphor.

So when he's developing the photographs, he is like a priest.

So somebody who is godly.

Now, this is used, ironically, because what he's doing is recording death here, it's as low he's in toning, a mess, the priest will help the soul into heaven.

Of course, the photographer is doing nothing of the sort the photographer is just recording death there's, no record of heaven in what he's doing.

And perhaps Duffy is suggesting that it's ironic because God does not exist.

There is mass slaughter in the war, what God could allow this.

So she may be pointing now this metaphor, ironically to get the reader to question, whether there is indeed a god.

Now we have this list thing and it's quite sophisticated here.

It starts near home.

This is Northern Ireland.

And then we get the Middle East, and then we get Southeast Asia, but crucially, these conflicts get bigger and bigger and bigger.

So this is part of a city.

This is a whole city, and then this becomes a whole country.

And then we have a biblical allusion here.

All flesh is grass and it's often used in order to excuse death.

This metaphor basically means we are born to die.

And therefore we should not complain about death.

Now in the Christian message, we don't complain about death, because when we die, we go to heaven, and so it can be seen as a positive experience.

However, if Duffy has already suggested in this line that there is no God.

Then here treating all flesh as grass is an ultimate tragedy and it's, a travesty it's treating human beings, as though they are no more than vegetable they're, completely worthless and their lives and their deaths do not matter to the perpetrators to the killers.

And by extension, perhaps also to the photographer, perhaps the photographer is thinking these thoughts and therefore death as no longer got the power to shock him.

Now that could be ironic because he wants to feel the pain of death because he wants his readers to feel the pain of that death.

These photographs go into the newspapers after all, because he wants to change the world.

He wants war to stop.

But an ironic consequence of that is that he himself is now no longer able to feel that pain.

So he sacrifices his own humanity in order to make his readers more human.

So that's one possible interpretation, again, Duffy plays with metaphor again.

So we're.

Now watching a photograph develop, and the image feels like a half-formed ghost, because as the image develops in the solution, you see the outlines be coming more and more solid.

So as its developing, it looks like a ghost it's faded.

However, again, we've got the semantic field of death here.

So she deliberately reminds us that the person in the photograph is probably dead.

And then we have.

He remembers the cries of this man's wife, how he sought approval so what's interesting now is he can't really focus on the dead person.

He's focusing on on that person's wife, who is living and her cries.

He puts cries at the end of the line to emphasize the pain that she's feeling.

And then he contrasts that with his own feelings, which are seeking approval.

Now it's like he's, asking permission to be allowed to photograph this execution.

Now Duffy has in mind a famous image, which I won't show you.

And the reason I won't show it to you is, you will end up writing about it in the exam and so that's, what she's definitely writing about them.

And of course, it's not definite.

But as this famous photograph of a policeman executing a member of the opposition, army shooting him in the street while people are watching on and it's taken the split second before the trigger is pulled and Duffy writes this.

As though the photographer is pointing the camera at the husband who's about to be killed, but looking with his eyes at the wife, who's crying because he's just about to be executed.

Now that approval is not given.

So he looks for that approval.

But it does not arrive.

He takes the photograph anyway.

So this again is a moral dilemma is he taking this photograph in order to show how horrific war is and therefore prevent it? Or is there a voyeurism involved? Here is there an intrusion on this private grief is it stealing something that does not belong to him? Well, the answer comes in this green quotation.

So he imagines the photograph in newspapers, the readers eyeballs, prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

So we got internal rhyme going on here, which makes this line feel jolly.

And that of course, is done, ironically, because what these readers should be feeling is shock and horror.

And he uses that sorry, Duffy uses that to contrast with the emotion, which should be tears.

But here the readers eyeballs, prick with tears that prick is tiny.

And it suggests how few the tears are, and it also conveys that they don't fully form.

So the emotion just isn't there.

So although he sought approval to take this photograph, it has not had the desired result of really transforming how the readers view the war.

In fact, they forget about it completely.

They literally wash it out by taking a bath, and then they get drunk.

So here Duffy is suggesting that modern people depend on the suffering of others, but they ignore that suffering.

And perhaps they've medicate themselves through the beers.

So they don't have to face their consciences.

They had to face what happens in the third world.

They don't have to face these wars that are happening in in foreign lands.

And the refugees don't have to be housed in our country.

You know, we can just ignore what's going on around the world and other people's suffering, despite the photographer's best efforts.

He has no impact.

So ultimately, Duffy portrays, this man's life as a tragedy.

His life's work has ruined his own ability to feel it's made him as we saw at the very beginning of the poem, only enjoy his own company.

He is now alone, but his reward which he hoped for to change the way other people viewed the world.

And viewed war has not happened.

So all his efforts have for nothing.

She then ends with a final rhyming couplet now, ending with a couplet suggests a sense of completeness its rounded off, you know, the two lines rhyme together, but this is done and ironically, because there is nothing complete about what the photographer feels from the aeroplane.

He stares impassively at where he earns his living, and they do not care.

So it's ambiguous.

Here is he staring out at Britain as he leaves and goes back off to war or is he staring impassively at the war.

He is leaving to return back to Britain.

But either way his stare is impassive it's without feeling.

In other words, Duffy is saying that ultimately the war photographer has been destroyed by his role.

He is unable to feel pleasure at coming home or pleasure at providing a service in the war that he's in he's, not going to make that country any better and he's, not going to make his own country, any better and he's just left with this desperation to make the people at home care enough to change the war.

But actually they don't and then there's.

This final irony that feeding this limited amount of emotion in people is how he earns is living and it's a terrible irony because it's the fact that he is living, and they are dying that this poem is about.

And once more to give us this idea of how unsettled he feels Duffy plays with the trochaic and iambic again, hopefully you'll spot, which of those is trochaic.

And which of those is I ambach.

So he earns his living, that's, unstress, stress, that's iambic.

And from the aeroplane, he stares impassively and that's trochaic.

So the stress is on from the aeroplane again.

You've got use of that idea.

Now she deliberately unsettles us with this change of meter this change of rhythm.

Okay.

So when we've been talking about the iambic and trochaic structure, that is also a discussion of form, it's also been a discussion of structure.

Every quotation we've looked at the literary techniques, the alliteration in particular sibilants, the metaphor.

Now having the ability to look at the opening.

And then the ending shows us the journey that the character has been on.

So we've explored his hopes, and then how the hopes are dashed at the end, and that gives us an argument that we're making throughout the essay and I hope you can see that's how the phosphate works it's designed to get us the very top marks.

So if we quickly now look at the very top of the mark scheme, we can see how the phosphate has forced us to get full marks so it's, a conceptualized approach.

Well, what that means is, we had an argument at the beginning, and we showed how that character developed that we had a concept we're, obviously writing about the full task.

Because we moved from the beginning of the poem to the end.

So writing about the opening in the end shows the examiner you're writing about the full task, we're, not writing about every quotation we're, just having five.

And that makes our analysis judicious we're using judicious references that means well chosen well, there's gonna be a fine grained insightful analysis, because you will have remembered a lot of what I told you about each quotation, hopefully you've taken notes you're going to make flashcards.

But look, we've written about form and structure now, that's, crucial and it's, beautiful because that's in the top grade let's go down to the grade below in the grades below you can write about structure or form.

So if you don't write about both of them, you're, probably going to be well, you're definitely going to be in the grade below for that bit of your essay.

So following the phosphate forces, the examiner to put you up here.

Then they've got to ask themselves was this a convincing exploration with different interpretations and ideas? Well, yes, it was that's.

How I chose my quotations in the first place.

They were the quotations that gave you the opportunity to have more than one idea.

Now, hopefully when you make your notes you'll realize that each of these couplets that I've highlighted could be split up into different sections.

So you wouldn't have to revise both parts of the coupler.

If you didn't want to, you know, you've got enough to write your essay, however, because these appearing couplets I think they'll actually be quite easy for you to remember for the exam.

Now, your next step ought to be to try and write an essay where you compare the two poems and what I've done here is translated, the Mart scheme, not as a set of skills, but as a set of instructions about what you should do to write your essay and I've set those instructions out as assessment objectives.

And what I'd encourage you to do is watch my video on another poem or just go with your notes and then try and write your comparison ticking off each of these as you go.

Because if you do all of these things as instructions you'll get the very top grades, you'll get into the top mark band, and it would train you so that when you go into the exam, you know, you're going to be able to get grade 7, 8 &, 9 so do subscribe because I'll be doing and more of a fact I'm going to do all of the power and conflict poems.

And some of the loveland relationships all through the phosphate to show you how to streamline your revision and get the top grades.

See you soon on my channel.