Summary
Summary An Easy Passage: Poem Analysis
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3.5 pages analysing the poem ‘An Easy Passage’ by Julia Copus. From ‘Poems of the Decade’ for Edexcel A-Level English Literature.
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An Easy Passage (Julia Copus)Title
• Focus on small snapshot moment – the girl’s physical passage into the house and its
place in the larger, figurative journey of adolescence
• Passage also evokes rites of passage in growing up
• Transition, sense of liminality – passage between childhood and adulthood
• In both literal and physical senses, is in fact not easy but a difficult and unguided
passage, yet the girl tests herself and succeeds
Possible themes
• Youth/adolescence
• Liminality and transition
• Passage of time, past and future
• Ageing, ephemerality
• Frustrated hopes of adulthood in contrast to carefree, self-absorbed youth
• Femininity and female expectations
• Memories and reflection, nostalgia
Form
Free verse, lacking pauses and rhyme – passing of time subconsciously, physically and
mentally maturing without realising or noting until later adult reflection.
Very long sentences (only 5 in the poem) and no stanza breaks – stream of consciousness,
focus on this specific moment, relentless passing of time and events.
Voice and context
The poem describes the physical passage of a 13 year old girl in a bikini perched on the
roof of her family house trying to break in through a window above the porch as she is
locked out (omniscient retrospective voice), and her figurative passage of adolescence.
The narrative then pans out to see the world around her (her friend below watching her,
her mother, the mundane frustration of the adult world), ending with the girl ‘dropping
gracefully into the shade of the house’. Tone is one of poise and reflection, emphasis on
the way the girl is oblivious to the outside world and completely focused on her present
passage into the window of the house.
It presents a crystallised snapshot of a seemingly insignificant moment of teenage girls
climbing into house, using the present tense to create focus on the moment, stasis,
happening in here and now. The narrative has a visual, cinematographic style, zooming in
on small and simple moments of youth to highlight the wider themes of the liminal stage
and transition of adolescence (has a ‘bildungsroman’ quality). Light imagery is used to
highlight the brightness and vitality of youthful energy, with adulthood presented as grey
and shaded.
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