The document is an exam review I made for the poetry and prose paper ins igcse/gcse english. It has sample questions and answers( which are detailed essays). The poems included are Funeral blues, The telephone call, Consumer's report, A request to a year and On a small fly crushed in a book.
• The Telephone Call
• A Consumer’s Report
• Request To a Year
• Funeral blues
• On a small fly crushed in a book
The Telephone call:
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/TheTelephoneCall-Poem.pdf
How does Adcock make the telephone conversation in The Telephone Call so vivid for you?
In "The Telephone Call," a mysterious caller claims that the speaker has won the lottery. The
speaker is skeptical, but they still display joy and hope. Eventually, the caller admits it's all a
hoax; instead of "money," they explain, they provide "Experiences”. By this time, the speaker
has fallen for the fantasy just enough to make the reality a bitter anticlimax. The poem
illustrates, then, how easy it is to give into unrealistic hopes—and how doing so can make the
disappointment even more crushing.
Adcock makes the conversation vivid by showing the feelings of hope in contrast to
disappointment/skepticism felt by the speaker. Even though the speaker suspects their amazing
luck is too good to be true, they get partly swept up in hope—and correspondingly
disappointed. On hearing that they've won "the top prize" in the lottery, the speaker's first
response is, "I just… I can’t believe it!" The stammering exclamation suggests they're already
feeling happy, even if skepticism prevents them from being overjoyed. Throughout the call, the
speaker remains a little doubtful—"I'll believe it when I see the cheque"—so when there turns
out to be no cheque, they're at least partly prepared. Yet joy has started to overtake their
rational doubts. The fact that the speaker indulges in some irrational hope shows that even
skeptics are liable to do so. The poem casts this cycle of guarded hope and predictable
disappointment as universal: part of the "experience" all humans share. When the speaker's
initial reaction is "I can't believe it!" the caller replies, "That's what they all say." This might
suggest that it's common to distrust amazing news, since most people know firsthand that such
news is often false. "I can't believe it!" is also a joyous exclamation that betrays some desire to
believe—and this, too, is part of human nature. The caller then claims that the speaker must
have bought a lottery ticket sometime: "Nearly everyone’s bought a ticket / In some lottery or
another, / Once at least." Metaphorically, this claim implies that we all indulge wild hopes at
, some point and can feel stung by their failure. The company's name, "Universal Lotteries," hints
at this same idea.
Another way Adcock makes the conversation so vivid is by showing the difference between
illusions and experience. After revealing that the speaker hasn't won any money the caller
claims that the real "prize" was the "experience". The poem implies that experience isn't always
necessarily "great"; some illusions are preferable to painful memories. The news makes the
speaker feel something remarkable at first. The callers then encourage the speaker to emote
more, explaining: "It isn’t every day you hear / You’re going to get a million pounds." The
speaker won't be getting that money, but just "hearing" they will—just the brief illusion—has
the power to produce an emotional high. The reason illusion is better than experience is
because whatever innocent "Excitement” the speaker may have felt has now been ruined by
reality. And no one actually enjoys "remembering" a major letdown! Rather than sharing their
feelings about their supposed prize, the speaker flatly reports, "the line went dead."
Metaphorically, this detail may suggest that their emotions have gone dead: whatever
happiness they were feeling has evaporated.
Adcock makes the conversation very vivid by clearly showing every detail of the speaker’s
emotions and by setting up some degree of suspicion. Cruel as the letdown is, it's also, in a
sense, perfectly ordinary. The disappointed speaker is no worse off financially than they were
before the phone call and no worse off than millions of lottery losers. Though the callers chirp,
"Have a nice day!" It's clear that the speaker's day would have been better without this
"experience." Even when experiences are memorable, they can be disappointing and
deadening. Copy everything in annotations.
Explore the ways in which Fleur Adcock strikingly conveys the two sides of the conversation in
the telephone call.
This poem shows how different people have their own way of seeing things. The caller who
tries to make fun out of human emotions, and the main character who is unafraid of expressing
her emotions until she got a bigger sense of the picture.
The poem shows how on one side the conversation is an illusion and on the other side it’s an
experience.
The poem shows how on one side the conversation seems very positive but on the other side
the conversation is actually a disappointment towards the end.
A Consumer’s Report:
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