Each poetry anthology at GCSE contains 15 poems, and in your exam question you will be given one poem - printed in full - and asked to compare this printed poem to another. As this is a closed-book exam, you will not have access to the second poem, so you will have to know it from memory. Fifteen poems are a lot to revise. However, understanding four things will enable you to produce a top-grade response:
- The meaning of the poem
- The ideas and messages of the poet
- How the poet conveys these ideas through their methods
- How do these ideas compare and contrast with the ideas of other poets in the anthology
Below is a guide to Beatrice Garland’s poem 'Kamikaze', from the Power and Conflict anthology. It includes:
- Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations
- Writer’s Methods: an exploration of the poet’s techniques and methods
- Context: an exploration of the context of the poem, relevant to its themes
- What to Compare it to: ideas about which poems to compare it to in the exam
Exam Tip
Kamikaze is part of the Power and Conflict anthology of poems, and the exam question asks you to compare the ideas presented in two of these anthology poems, specifically related to the ideas of power and conflict.
It is therefore as important that you learn how Kamikaze compares and contrasts with other poems in the anthology as understanding the poem in isolation. See the section below on ‘What to Compare it to’ for detailed comparisons of Kamikaze and other poems in the anthology.
Overview
In order to answer an essay question on any poem it is vital that you understand what it is about. This section includes:
- The poem in a nutshell
- A ‘translation’ of the poem, section-by-section
- A commentary of each of these sections, outlining Garland’s intention and message
Kamikaze in a nutshell
Kamikaze was written by the poet Beatrice Garland in a bid to explore the reasons why soldiers choose to, or are asked to, die for their country. Garland’s poem Kamikaze presents the perspectives of both the kamikaze pilot and his daughter to show their different ideas about conflict.
Kamikaze breakdown
Lines 1-3
“Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
in the cockpit, a shaven head”
Translation
- The poem begins by reporting an event from a daughter’s perspective: a father leaves on a journey
- The speaker mentions a list which details the pilot’s belongings and the ritualistic shaved head of a kamikaze pilot
Garland’s intention
- Garland begins her poem with a description of the pilot boarding his aeroplane to show the personal perspective of his experience
- The reference to the ritual a kamikaze pilot undertakes before boarding tells readers the pilot is on a suicide mission for his country
Lines 4-6
“full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-way
journey into history”
Translation
- Garland refers again to the ritual: the pilot is repeating patriotic chants (“incantations”)
- The speaker tells the reader that this is a suicide mission which will lead to glory for the pilot, that he will be respected always for his sacrifice
Garland’s intention
- Here, Garland refers to the power behind the chants of honour and glory which the pilot repeats to complete his military duty
- Garland’s speaker lets readers know that this suicide mission is one of patriotism, that he has been called to carry out an important duty
Lines 7-8
“but half way there, she thought,
recounting it later to her children,”
Translation
- The speaker is the pilot’s daughter who is telling the story to her children
- She continues the story of the father, suggesting that something changes “half way there”
Garland’s intention
- Garland alerts readers that this is a story being told by a mother to her children about her own father, showing the perspective of family members during and after conflict
- The break in stanza pauses the story and, with the conjunction “but”, the speaker highlights something changed on the pilot’s journey, that he had doubts about his duties
Lines 9-12
“he must have looked far down
at the little fishing boats
strung out like bunting
on a green-blue translucent sea”
Translation
- Here, the speaker of the story recounts to her children what she imagines about the pilot’s journey: she guesses he looked down on the ocean from his aeroplane
Garland’s intention
- The lines convey a tone of nostalgia as the pilot leaves his home behind
- Garland explores the pilot’s thoughts and feelings in a bid to understand his experience
- The speaker suggests the father may have felt emotional, homesick perhaps, as he sees the beautiful ocean
Lines 13-16
“and beneath them, arcing in swathes
like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,
the dark shoals of fishes”
Translation
- The speaker describes the scene below: the pilot can see the shadows of fish swimming under the water
- Now the pilot can see a darker shadow of fish beneath the water
- Garland describes the size and magnitude of the shoals of fish with the word “swathes” which means ‘a broad area’
Garland’s intention
- These lines contrast the earlier positive description of the scene
- This description could convey darker thoughts in the pilot’s mind, suggesting he doubts his part in the conflict
- The fish shoals are described as a flag, like a warning to him
Lines 17-20
“flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sun
and remembered how he
and his brothers waiting on the shore”
Translation
- The speaker describes the fish turning, now silver and bright in the sun
- This reminds him of his childhood, fishing with his brothers
Garland’s intention
- These lines depict the darker thoughts being replaced with brighter memories of the pilot’s childhood
- The fish seem to signal to the pilot as they turn and flash in the sun, suggesting nature reminds him of what is important
Lines 21 - 24
“built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles
to see whose withstood longest
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their father’s boat safe”
Translation
- The speaker tells us the pilot remembers how he built small graves of stone with his brother
- He describes how he and his brother competed to see whose grave withstood the crash of waves as they brought the boat in
Garland’s intention
- The pilot’s memories remind him of family, and of death
- Here, Garland shows how the pilot remembers small intimate details of his past which help him realise the power of nature and the importance of family
Lines 25-30
“- yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
with cloud-marked mackerel,
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.”
Translation
- The speaker begins to list all the fish they would catch fishing together as a family
- The pilot remembers catching a tuna, a strong and powerful fish
Garland’s intention
- The disrupted rhythm here begins a stream of consciousness sensory memory
- The descriptions convey the vivid memory the pilot has as he looks down on the water where he fished with his family
- The speaker refers to the dark and powerful tuna, alluding to ideas of strength and power with a metaphor of "dark prince"
- However, Garland gives this power to nature, not the pilot: this subverts ideas relating to military strength and power
Lines 31-33
“And though he came back
my mother never spoke again
in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes”
Translation
- The speaker explains that the pilot did return home; he did not complete his mission
- However, his return was not welcomed by the speaker's mother, the pilot’s wife
Garland’s intention
- Garland shows the power of the pilot’s childhood memories and love for his home: he returns, choosing not to die in conflict
- The perspective of the speaker’s mother is unexpected perhaps: she is disgraced by his return and his disobedience towards his duty to his country:
- Garland comments on the culture of honour and patriotism
- She conveys the extreme response of individuals when soldiers defy cultural values
Lines 34-36
“and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existed,
only we children still chattered and laughed”
Translation
- The speaker explains that other people responded similarly: the neighbours alienated the pilot
- The children did not understand these ideas, and continued as before
Garland’s intention
- Garland shows how powerful the values of honour and glory are for the pilot’s neighbours, so strong that they ignore and ostracise him
- Garland explores how children respond differently, suggesting patriotism is learned behaviour
Lines 37-40
“till gradually we too learned
to be silent, to live as though
he had never returned, that this
was no longer the father we loved.”
Translation
- The speaker explains that the children were told to ignore their father too
- The lines here depict the way the children were taught to deny him as a father
Garland’s intention
- Garland shows an example of children being taught to mimic the ideas of their elders
- Her poem explores family conflicts as a result of cultural ideals regarding patriotism
Lines 41-42
“And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
which had been the better way to die.”
Translation
- The speaker ends the poem with her own reflections
- She considers the huge price her father paid for returning home instead of sacrificing his life for his country:
- She considers his life afterwards to be a metaphorical death too
Garland’s intention
- Garland comments on the sacrifice the father had to make whether or not he completed his suicide mission to explore the impact of patriotic values on family
- She ends the poem with a poignant comment which shifts the narration from the external to the internal: the ending suggests unresolved emotions
Exam Tip
Your exam question will ask you to compare how poets present ideas about power and/or conflict in the poem given to you on the exam paper and one other from the Power and Conflict anthology. It is therefore a good idea to begin your answer using the wording of the question and summarising what the poem tells us about the nature of conflict. This demonstrates that you have understood the poem and the poet’s intention. For example, “Garland presents negative ideas about conflict and its effects in Kamikaze by showing loss within families. Similar themes can be found in…”