An essay comparing the presentation of memories in the two poems from the Poems of the Decade anthology: Dumore's 'To My Nine-Year-Old Self' and Ford's 'Giuseppe'. Written by a current university student that achieved an A* in English Literature A level by memorising these essays which are structur...
Essay Plan: Compare the ways in which memories of the past are presented in ‘To my Nine-
Year-Old Self’ by Helen Dunmore / ‘Giuseppe’ by Roderick Ford and one other poem.
Introduction:
An immediate point of comparison between Roderick Ford’s ‘Giuseppe’ / Helen
Dunmore’s ‘To my Nine-Year-Old Self’ and Ross Barber’s ‘Material’ is that they both
explore memories of the past.
‘To my Nine-Year-Old Self’ takes the form of a dramatic monologue in which the
poet writes in the first-person to present her readers with a fictionalised situation in
which she imagines that she encounters her past self at the age of nine / ‘Giuseppe’
combines fantasy and realism as it presents the speaker recounting his uncle’s
involvement in the slaughter of a mermaid at the time of the Second World War,
perhaps representing all of the past and present war crimes and atrocities.
Meanwhile, the central concern of ‘Material’ is a nostalgia and remembrance for the
things of the past.
Point one (Giuseppe):
From the outset of ‘Giuseppe,’ Ford mixes realism as it deals with past events that
supposedly took place in “Sicily” at the time of the “World War Two,” but also
includes the fantastical element of the “mermaid” who is violently butchered.
Ford juxtaposes “bougainvillea,” a symbol of life and growth, with the harrowing
image of the mermaid “butchered on the dry and dusty ground.”
The reference to real individuals helps to make the fantastic account seem credible
and adds disturbing elements of realism, for example the “priest” who “held one of
her hands / while her throat was cut.”
The reference to her “hands” being held whilst she endured such suffering gives the
mermaid a human quality yet her humanity is denied by the priest who declares that
she is “only a fish.”
Nevertheless, his pronouncement is undercut by the revelation that “she screamed
like a woman in fear.”
At this point, the poem’s allegorical significance begins to become apparent. In past
events, such as the Holocaust in which Jews were also classified as sub-human,
perpetrators of war crime have sought to justify their actions by denying the
humanity of their victims and drawing attention to their otherness.
Point one (To my Nine-Year-Old Self):
From the outset of ‘To my Nine-Year-Old Self,’ Dunmore presents the speaker’s past
self who seems to be fully immersed in the world of childhood.
The poem opens in quite a startling way: “You must forgive me. Don’t look so
surprised.”
Straight away we get a sense of the adult’s spoken voice as she seems almost to
intrude on a child’s carefree world in which the child is happy to take risks, as the
child might be discovered “balancing on [her] hands or on a tightrope.”
As the adult, the speaker laments her childhood carelessness: “I have spoiled this
body we once shared” and is now risk averse: “careful of a bad back or a bruised
foot.”
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