Absences

Question 1

“Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs”

Answer 1

• Pathetic fallacy : weather presented as powerful and resentful
• Constant movement and lack of control
• Immediately introduced to pastoral imagery
• Personification : sense of relief yet loneliness- vast setting

Question 2

“Fast running floors, collapsing into hollows, tower suddenly, spray haired”

Answer 2

• Fricative alliteration : sense of discombobulating,
• Weather is uncontrollable, pun (sea / beach hair)

Question 3

“A wave drops like a wall”

Answer 3

• Simile : powerful and destructive force of nature
• Irony : related to man made force

Question 4

“Wilting and scrambling, tirelessly at play where there are no ships and no shallows”

Answer 4

• Power of sea is overwhelming, uninviting and dangerous
• Repeated negators : unnatural, incongruous to setting, sense of solitude and loneliness
• Liminal setting : inhabitable
• Human connection is absent, threat of death and drowning

Question 5

“Above the sea, the yet more shoreless day”

Answer 5

• Hypallage : lack of perimeter and protection, restrictive and enclosed attitude of nature
• Uninviting
• Presents sea as unpredictable and desolate
• Magnitude and scope of nature

Question 6

“Riddled by wind, trails lit-up galleries”

Answer 6

• Natural imagery : wind is an inescapable force
• Dysphemism : the day is overwhelming, emphasises the power of nature, clouds disperse so sunlight can emerge
• Sense of hope and optimism provoked through light imagery
• Speakers find peace from isolation

Question 7

“They sift to giant ribbing”

Answer 7

• Motif of tranquility : passive, careless movement, lack of urgency
• Emphasises the power of light and nature, worries are sifted away

Question 8

“Such attics cleared of me, such absences”

Answer 8

• Anaphoric repetition : confinement is undermined, there is freedom and liberation furthered through the Exclamative emphasising a sense of happiness
• Clipped nature emphasises the speakers passivity, problems removed for him
• Juxtaposes the previous natural imagery through man-made structure, domestication, identity is created

Question 9

STRUCTURE

Answer 9

• Terza rima rhyme scheme : emphasises the connect and power of nature, everlasting
• Shift in perspective : weather is initially described as omniscient and destructive but becomes peaceful and passive
• Sestet, tercet, single line : fading of the destruction

Question 10

CONTEXT

Answer 10

• Symbolist poem
• Atypical style of movement writer
• Baudelaire : symbolist style “naturalist concepts” / “joyous assertion of freedom”