There are fifteen poems in the GCSE Power and Conflict anthology.

For your exam, you will be given one poem in full, printed on the page, and you will be asked to compare this poem to another from the anthology.

All of the GCSE English Literature course is closed-book, meaning that you will need to learn at least three lines from each poem.

It is possible to get top marks for this question by making sure that you know the following:

• What the poem is about

• What the poem means

• The methods the poet uses to convey their message

• The links between the ideas of other poems in the anthology

Synopsis

This section includes:

• A general overview of the poem

• A detailed look at the poem line-by-line

• Analysis of the poem, giving Beatrice Garland's intention and message

A General Overview of the Poem

Kamikaze explores the concept of honour and its conflict with the human will to survive. The speaker, who is unidentified, relates the story of an abandoned Kamikaze mission, largely through the shamed pilot’s ashamed daughter, who attempts to make sense of his decision when relating it to her own children. The poem explores the disconnect between committing to life – that is, family, nostalgia, nature, a future – and committing to your vows.

Line-by-Line

Her father embarked at sunrise

with a flask of water, a samurai sword

in the cockpit, a shaven head

full of powerful incantations

and enough fuel for a one-way

journey into history  

The poem opens with a distancing technique: “Her father embarked”. The poem is separated from the events themselves by several degrees: neither the first person ‘I embarked’ nor the immediate third person ‘my father embarked’, but a third and more detached third party referring to “[h]er father”, establishing an immediate sense of removal from the events. It quickly becomes apparent why.

Whilst the “father” is initially humanised, as needing “a flask of water”, he is otherwise defined as a myopic servant of the emperor, with the characteristic features of a Kamikaze: “samurai sword / in the cockpit [and] a shaven head / full of powerful incantations”. There is a strong expectation that, especially given the orienting title of “Kamikaze”, this story will detail a suicide bombing.

The final part of the opening stanza reinforces the idea that this is a sure thing, “a one-way journey”, before establishing the powerful incentive: that it represents a “journey into history”. Neat. But not as cut-and-dried as that.

but half way there, she thought,

recounting it later to her children,

he must have looked far down

at the little fishing boats

strung out like bunting

on a green-blue translucent sea 

The next stanza begins with the conjunction “but”, representing a jarring undermining of the clear expectations set out by the first stanza. That said, the audience are not privy to what the “but” really signifies until four stanzas later, when the poem is nearly over, and we learn that “he came back”.

Instead, we are treated to an extended rumination on the beauty of nature, in order to soften the hardened figure of the Kamikaze, who sees “a green-blue translucent sea” and sweetly describes the “little fishing boats” as “strung out like bunting”.

We don’t yet realise he won’t see his mission through, especially as we are told she only “thought” that “he must have looked far down”, suggesting she could never get his testimony. At this point, it seems like an imaginative insight into the nostalgia the plagues someone who knows they are about to die.

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

flashing silver as their bellies

swivelled towards the sun 

The poem continues with idyllic images of nature, as if viewed through the rose-tinted spectacles of one clinging to the last moments of the world’s beauty: “shoals of fishes / flashing silver”.

There is only the subtlest hint of a darker purpose behind the flyover, in the simile “like a huge flag” that reminds us that there is a national motivation behind the mission, and the fishes’ “bellies” that are angled upwards in a submissive manner – perhaps also reference to Harakiri, a ritualised suicide practice of the Samurai.

and remembered how he

and his brothers waiting on the shore

built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles

to see whose withstood longest

the turbulent inrush of breakers

bringing their father’s boat safe 

To reinforce the daughter-speaker’s theory that it was the views out of the plane that must have caused her father’s change of heart, the next stanza transposes the sights below into imagined memories from the pilot’s childhood: “remembered how he / and his brothers [...] built cairns”.

The nostalgic imagery, underpinned by the familial vocabulary of “brothers” and “father’s”, plants the idea in the reader’s head that there may be more to live for than to die for. It is not nationalistic imagery but personal, intimate imagery that he revels in.

– 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. 

This stanza links, as all of the first five stanzas do, through enjambment, to the previous one – and is interpolated with an italicised moment of the daughter telling her own children the story: “– yes, grandfather’s boat –”. This ties the pilot’s focus on family to his daughter’s focus; it is clearly something she has inherited.
The remainder of the stanza continues with the natural and small-world imagery of fish and fishing, idealising it further with adjectives like “feathery” and nouns like “silver”, before another reminder of the dark purpose is thrust in insistently and jarringly with the first full stop of the poem: “a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.”

Ending with a full stop and the adjective “dangerous” is unsettling.

And though he came back

my mother never spoke again

in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes

and the neighbours too, they treated him

as though he no longer existed,

only we children still chattered and laughed 

This stanza is italicised because we have shed one of our degrees of separation; the speaker is now the mother herself, in the first person. We have gained some intimacy.

The truth is finally revealed – that “he came back” – and the heavy consequences of such a move are related in absolutes: his wife “never spoke again / in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes” and he was treated “as though he no longer existed” by those around him. 

The fact that “only [the] children still chattered and laughed” is a clear message: the concept of dying with honour being superior to living with shame is one that cannot be comprehended by children, and one that must be imposed by adults.

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.

And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered

which had been the better way to die. 

The final stanza confirms that shaming the pilot must be “learned” by his children rather than being natural. It starts with behaviour, “to be silent, to live as though / he had never returned”, and then becomes acceptance of an imposed philosophy: “that this / was no longer the father we loved”.

The final sentence of the poem, now back in the detached third person, relays the central dichotomy of the poem: “which [is] the better way to die” – quickly, honourably, but early, or slowly, dishonourably, having lived it to its natural end.

The intimate access to the daughter-turned-mother’s insights into her father, the eponymous pilot, may suggest that the true speaker is one of her children. If so, it is striking to note that the pilot remains “Her father” and never ‘my grandfather’, indicating that shaming his dishonour is a behaviour inherited by his children.

Writer's Methods

This section aims to support your revision by providing you with concrete and clear examples of methods that Beatrice Garland uses. 

Remember: methods support meaning, not the other way round. You will gain more marks focusing your essays on the big ideas of the poems and then supporting these ideas with the methods that the writer uses.

Form

The poem is highly prosaic (meaning prose-like) and narrative in style, with very little in the way of poetic conventions. Whilst it has fairly consistent line-lengths and uniform stanzas, there is no discernible meter, nor is there any rhyme, meaning it reads more like a story than a poem. 

Furthermore, the lines are not initially capitalised, with a great deal of enjambement and very little punctuation, creating something of a stream-of-consciousness narrative piece. There is not a great deal that is “neat” and “poetic” in this poem, which is deliberate; this is a raw narrative, with little whimsy.

Structure

The poem is split into seven distinct stanzas of six lines each, in free verse (no rhyme scheme nor set meter). The narrative is fairly linear: starting with “embark[ing]” on the flight; then “look[ing] far down” at the ocean; then reflecting on the associated nostalgic images of childhood, “bringing their father’s boat safe”; and then deciding to “c[o]me back”; and finally concluding with the aftermath, “liv[ing] as though / he had never returned”. 

What is much less uniform is the perspective from which the narrative is delivered. At times, an unnamed overseer (who may or may not be the grandchild of the Kamikaze) narrates omnisciently; at others, the daughter of the Kamikaze relates her insights (in either direct or reported speech); and at still other times, it is as though the pilot himself is providing the story. 

The poem ends with a clear delineation of the moral crux of the poem: whether shameful survival and a late death is “the better way to die” than quickly and in the name of the country.

Language

The emotional heart of the narrative is carried through two semantic fields: one of maritime life and one of family. Whilst the opening stanza uses vocabulary to tie the narrative to the Kamikaze idea elicited by the title, with “samurai sword”, “cockpit”, “shaven head”, “powerful incantations”, and “one-way / journey into history”, this aspect is soon abandoned in favour of those two.

Maritime life is beautiful and simplistic: “little fishing boats / strung out like bunting / on a green-blue translucent sea”, “dark shoals of fishes / flashing silver”, “cairns [made] of pearl-grey pebbles”, “cloud-marked mackerel, / black crabs, feathery prawns, / the loose silver of a whitebait”. Only occasionally is it infected by the sense of foreboding: “like a huge flag”, “turbulent inrush of breakers”, “muscular, dangerous”.

Family life is at times nostalgic: “he / and his brothers [...] built cairns”, “their father’s boat safe”, “we children still chattered and laughed”. At other times it is fraught and complex: “my mother never spoke again / in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes”, “this / was no longer the father we had loved.

The maritime jargon lends the poem a striking authenticity and verisimilitude, whilst the familial references provide deep insights.

Context

At MyEdSpace, we use this analogy to discuss context – ketchup, salt and chips.

If you ordered a portion of chips, and asked for salt, you wouldn’t then dump the salt into the corner of your chips and start dipping each individual chip into the salt. 

When you put salt on your chips, you sprinkle it over, sparingly, so as to give a good coverage of salt across the chips as a whole. Context is just like salt on chips. 

Context is not ketchup – because it would be appropriate to squeeze ketchup into the corner of your plate and dip each chip in (and in fact, that is advised).

So when you’re including contextual information in your essays, sprinkle it across the essay, just like you sprinkle salt on your chips.

Let’s link the context to the key ideas and themes of the poem.

The poet, Beatrice Garland

Beatrice Garland never experienced war and has no connection to Japan, so this poem is imaginative – but she capitalises on her professional background as a highly experienced psychologist for this poem, which builds on her wider poetic oeuvre, focusing on trauma, relationships and memory, and was published in her collection ‘The Invention of Fireworks’ (2013). 

Kamikaze pilots

During the back end of WW2, in the face of impending defeat, Japan sent many young men (often teens) to die in suicide bombing missions in the name of honour and the emperor.

Comparison

You are required to write an essay in your exam that is a comparison of the ideas and themes explored in two poems from the Power & Conflict anthology. Therefore, it is very important to revise the poems in pairs and to enter the exam with an idea of what poem you will choose to compare once you know what the named poem is.

Kamikaze and The Emigrée

Both poems dwell on past conflict and its lasting legacy in the present. Both poems balance nostalgic idealism with harsher perspectives. However, Kamikaze focuses on the fallout of disappointing your country and your family, whilst The Emigrée focuses on the loss and gain that comes from leaving your country behind.

Similarity

Both poems depict the reactions of loyalists to those who are no longer loyal.

Evidence and Analysis 

Garland’s poem gives an intimate insight into the rejection faced by the returning Kamikaze by the adults around him – his wife, who “never spoke again” to him nor “me[t] his eyes”, and his neighbours who acted “as though he no longer existed” – that eventually trickled down into the children’s behaviour: “be[ing] silent”, “liv[ing] as though / he had never returned”. The repetition of the adverb “never” shows the permanence of the consequences.

Rumens’ poem reflects boldly on the aggression emigrées face when encountering their birthplaces, though admittedly only in her imagination, where they “accuse” her of both “absence” and “being dark”, before “circl[ing]” her and “mutter[ing] death”. The repetition of the verb “accuse” creates a sense of injustice – that these perceptions of her are unjust when applied to her behaviour.

Difference

The poets focus on different manifestations of nostalgia.

Evidence and Analysis

Beatrice Garland’s focus is on the nostalgia for a known childhood soon to be lost to death.

In her poem, the eponymous pilot is blindsided by nostalgic memories of his childhood that ultimately lead him to cling to life. We can see how this nostalgia for when “he / and his brothers [...] built cairns [until] their father’s boat [returned] safe / to the shore” is nostalgic primarily through the hyperbolised imagery used to depict the prosaic exercise of unloading a fisherman’s net: the prawns are “feathery” and whitebait becomes “loose silver”. The past is crude and unremarkable, but has been sanitised and idealised, to make life seem worth living in the present.

Contrastingly, in Rumens’ poem, the nostalgia is for a likely corrupted memory.

In her poem, the motif of “sunlight” is both a fluid depiction of nostalgia in various forms and also a corrupter of memories; she is “branded by an impression of sunlight”. As such, she recognises that this is only how it “seems” in her memory of her “original view”, which “may by now be a lie”. Her memories, idyllic images of “graceful slopes” and “white streets”, are not accurate, but provide her a warming link to her roots.