Transcript War photographer - English teaching resources | A site to

DUFFY: WAR PHOTOGRAPHER – AS UNSEEN
As with any UNSEEN poem, read this one closely and highlight anything that strikes
you as interesting or unusual about the poem
Feel free to annotate the poem on the examination paper
The most straightforward acronym to assist with an unseen is …
SLIME
USE SLIME TO ORGANISE YOUR THOUGHTS
S: what can you say about the structure?
Discuss this for 5 minutes.
Organised: 4 stanzas of 6 lines possibly reflect organised nature of the job?
Each stanza is a stage in the developing process
There is a rhyme pattern
Negative thoughts in final lines?
LANGUAGE
The language is quite matter of fact but delivers a strong message.
10 minutes this time – choose some to comment upon. REMEMBER that the effect
of the language is what matters, not the device
language
effect
In his dark room
A dark room is the photographers
office but dark is the first of
many colour adjectives
suggesting here threat and
sadness
He has a job to do
The short sentence suggests the
importance of the task and
removes emotion form the
resultant photo
A hundred agonies
Each photo both records agony
and is painful to look at
Between the bath and prelunch beers
Alliteration of B & P suggests a
bitterness in the idea of the easy
Sunday of the reader
IMAGERY
The is a strong SIMILE to discuss and plenty of colour imagery – come up with some
ideas of your own to discus the reasons for the choice of language here.
“As though this were a church” uses a simile to suggests the sense of care and
reverence with which the photographer works.
His photos become religious paraphernalia through this simile.
“Black and White” not only reflects the newspaper print but is also a metaphor used
to imply utter clarity of information.
MEANING
Hopefully by this stage you have some ideas about what the poet is trying to convey.
What do you think this poem “means”? Where do you find your clues?
The negativity of each final line?
The anger apparent in the final stanza?
The comment that the readers do not “care”?
“to do what someone MUST”?
The contrasts in the second stanza?
Choose a couple of these ideas and construct a short paragraph to explain the meaning of
the poem.
EFFECT
How does the poem make you feel?
Do you think that this feeling is what Duffy intended?
Use the fifth paragraph as a conclusion to draw your ideas together…
“Duffy’s poem with its understated criticism of everyday life with regards to attitudes
to war makes me feel guilty of my own complacent attitude to events that are not
on my “doorstep”. The suggestion that the photographer is like a priest saying
Mass helps to reinforce the admiration I feel for this dedicated and brave man”.