Hi there.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's lesson on analysing the poem, "Kamikaze" by Beatrice Garland.

I'm Miss Sutherland and I'll be teaching you today.

Our learning outcome for today is to be able to explore how Garland uses language and structure to explore the conflicts between personal and national duty in the poem "Kamikaze".

Our three key words for today's lesson are incantations.

Incantations are magical spells or charms. So if you think back to the witches in Macbeth, they start the play by reciting incantations.

Patriotism, patriotism means love or devotion to one's country.

And lastly, alluring.

Alluring means powerfully or mysteriously attractive or fascinating.

So there're your three key words crucial for today's learning.

I want you to pause the video, reread them, or jot them down now.

Don't worry if it's the first time you're coming across these words, we'll revisit them in today's learning.

So we are going to start off learning today by looking at national versus personal duty in the poem "Kamikaze", we'll look at how the pilot in "Kamikaze" has a conflict between his national and his personal duty.

In the second learning cycle, we'll then explore the power of nature in this poem.

So let's begin with exploring national versus personal duty.

So the first question I want you to consider is what might make someone embark on a Kamikaze mission? Remember, a Kamikaze mission was a mission in which pilots were asked to drive planes loaded with explosives, and they were asked to crash into enemy ships.

But in doing that, they'd also kill themselves.

So flying a Kamikaze mission was a huge sacrifice.

So discuss then what might make someone embark on a mission like that? Off you go.

Let's go through what you may have said.

You may have said that someone may embark on a Kamikaze mission due to national obligation.

So they may be told to do it by their country and they may have no choice but to do it.

They may embark on that mission because of patriotism.

So if they love their country and have this strong sense of devotion towards their country, that might inspire them to fight for their country and sacrifice their lives for their country.

Having a collective conscience might make someone embark on a Kamikaze mission.

So be so having a conscience that is kind of inspired or motivated by other people.

So someone on a Kamikaze mission might believe that to do the right thing is to benefit the whole of their society.

And so they may embark on the mission in order to protect the rest of the society they live in.

Someone might embark on a Kamikaze mission because they believe they have a higher purpose.

So maybe believing that they want to live their life for others and not themselves.

A Kamikaze pilot may embark on a mission due to wanting honour, wanting to be respected and honoured for being brave.

Someone might embark on a Kamikaze mission to get their family or community's approval.

And lastly, another reason why someone may want to embark on a Kamikaze mission is to be remembered for something good.

There are just some possible reasons.

These don't necessarily tell the whole story of why people embarked on Kamikaze missions.

They're just ideas.

Now I want you to reread the first stanza of the poem "Kamikaze".

Which parts of this poem allude to national duty? Pause the video, reread the stanza and consider that question.

Off you go.

So National duty is all about the obligation you have on behalf of your country.

Let's have a look at how that's explored in the first stanza.

Firstly, Japan is known as the 'Land of the Rising Sun'.

So the imagery in the opening line reminds us that the pilot is on a mission for his country.

Next, the quote, "Powerful 'incantations' may allude to propaganda and messages of patriotism that may have motivated this man to embark on the mission.

So we can think of the messages being given to the man about why he should embark on this mission.

We can almost, we can almost imagine them as seeming like spells or charms that made this man feel like this was the right course of action to take.

And the quote, "One-way journey in history" also highlights national duty because it highlights how this journey was one that would bring honour to the man and his family because of how it would reflect his devotion and dedication to his country.

Now, what would you say the pilot recognises his personal duty as? So we can describe personal duty as an obligation you have to yourself.

So something you must do for your own benefit or because it's something you want to do.

So what would you say the pilot recognises his personal duty as? Pause the video and consider that question.

Let's go through what you may have said.

Maybe the pilot's personal duty is to experience the beauty of the natural world.

We can see this through the way in which nature is described as beautiful and alluring in the poem.

For example, in the quote, "fishes flashing silver".

Maybe the pilot's personal duty is to make memories with his family because there is a tone of nostalgia.

When the pilot's, fam and childhood memories are discussed.

That can be seen in the quote "he and his brothers built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles." The pilot's personal duty could also be seen as living for the present, not the future.

So we could say that his national duty was to be written down in history for the sacrifice he makes, but his personal duty is to come back.

So we see being remembered in history is him living for the future, but him coming back is living for the present.

So perhaps the pilot's personal duty is to live for the present, not the future.

So, so far we've discussed what the pilot's national duty was versus what his personal duty was.

I wonder if you notice which duty the pilot prioritises.

Now here are two interesting structural features of this poem.

The first one is that each stanza is six lines.

The second one is that there is free verse in this poem and an enjambment throughout.

Free verse means the poem is written with no regular rhyme scheme.

Enjambment means lines flow onto the other without any punctuation.

Discuss now what you think represents national duty and which aspects of structure represents the personal duty and why.

Pause the video and discuss.

Let's go through some ideas.

Each stanza being six lines means that there is a rigid stanza length and that could reflect the national duty placed on the pilot.

Perhaps he felt it was restrictive, much like the stanza length seems to be.

How about the free verse and enjambment throughout? That could reflect the personal duty as the pilot chose to break free from expectations in order to be true to his own purpose.

Ultimately, the way in which the enjambment and free verse break free from the rigid stanza length could show too how the pilot breaks free of expectations.

I now want you to discuss, does the pilot perceive personal or national duty as most important? And how do you know? Pause the video and discuss.

Next is, does the pilot's family perceive personal or national duty as most important? And how do you know? Answer that question now.

Off you go.

Let's go through what you may have said.

The pilot perceives personal duty as most important as he decides to return back home and not go through with the suicide mission.

This shows he values his life and all that he has to live for such as nature and the memories of his family.

However, the pilot's family perceive national duty is more important as they shun the pilot once he returns home.

Remember that means they reject him, they ignore him.

They choose not to associate or speak to him anymore.

And that could suggest that they would rather have, they would rather he had fulfilled the sacrificial mission.

So it seems that the family value honour, and national duty is more important than soldiers, than the pilot's individual life.

Now let's look deeper at how Garland shows society's attitude towards personal duty.

One way we can explore this is by looking at the perspective and the pronouns.

Discuss now, which person is stanza one to five written and why could this be? Do we ever hear the Kamikaze pilot's perspective? Why or why not? And how is the Kamikaze pilot referred to throughout the poem? And why do you think this is? Pause the video and answer those three very interesting questions now.

Let's go through what you may have said.

Stanza one to five is written in the third person.

This may reflect the daughter of the pilot distancing herself from her father due to the shame associated with cancelling the mission.

So the daughter doesn't actually acknowledge the pilot as her own father until the end of the poem, which could indeed show how she's ashamed of him, how she was reluctant to even acknowledge that, that he was her father because he didn't fulfil his national duty.

Number two, we do not hear from a Kamikaze pilot's perspective at all in this poem.

And perhaps this reflects how he was ignored and his value not recognised after he returned from the mission.

He isn't given a voice and that reflects potentially how no one listened to him.

No one acknowledged him.

No one treated him as if he was alive after he returned from the mission.

Number three, the pilot is referred to with pronouns, he and his throughout the poem.

This may reflect how the Kamikaze pilot's identity was tied to national honour.

When he aborted the mission, he lost his sense of identity.

Therefore, he's not named and he's not given his own identity in the poem.

Well done on that discussion.

Those are really, really interesting questions and those answers are going to be really important when you explore the theme of identity in this poem.

Let's check your understanding of what we discussed.

When considering the theme of national duty, "powerful incantations" may refer to? Pause the video and answer that question.

When considering the theme of national duty, powerful incantations may refer to the propaganda values that encouraged Kamikaze emissions.

Remember how we said that the messages of patriotism and honour could have been in those propaganda messages and they almost act as spells or charms to encourage the pilots to embark on these missions? The quotes "remembered how he and his brothers built cairns," may depict how the pilot? Pause the video and complete that sentence.

This quote may depict how the pilot perceived a duty to himself so perceived a personal duty to prioritise his family and relationships over his national duty.

Because his memory of building cairns with his brothers is cited as one of the reasons why he potentially comes back home, which shows to the pilot, family is much more important than sacrificing life for his country's course.

Now, Laura has given her opinion on the poem.

She says in 'Kamikaze', Garland shows that not even the most noble motive is more important than enjoying the beauty of the world in the present moment.

Do you agree or disagree with Laura? Write a paragraph explaining your ideas.

Refer to: evidence from the poem, the concepts of national and personal duty, contextual information and different perspectives in the poem in your answer.

Pause the video and write your answer.

Off you go.

Great effort there.

Here are some ideas you may have had.

Is there anything you would add to your own answer? I agree with Laura.

The pilot seems to decide to turn back as he sees nature below.

In his near death moment, he's able to recognise its sheer beauty and impressiveness.

This suggests that fulfilling his personal duty via experiencing and enjoying the beauty of nature is more important than his national duty to perform the sacrificial mission.

Instead of dedicating one's life to national honour in order to be remembered for our history and thus living for those in the future, the pilot decides to live for the present.

This is signified in his appreciation for beauty of life and the shoals of fish flashing silver as it appears below him.

Pause the video and consider if you would add any of those ideas to your own.

Excellent reflection.

Let's move on to exploring the power of nature in Kamikaze now.

So nature is capable of pulling the Kamikaze pilot back home and the description of nature permeates stanza two to five of this poem.

So how exactly is nature described in the poem "Kamikaze"? Use the quotes to guide you.

The quotes we have are: "feathery prawns, the loose silver of white bait," "dark shoals of fishes, flashing silver fishes," "fishing boats strung out like bunting," "as their bellies swivel towards the sun," "waiting on the shore built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles," and "green-blue translucent sea".

Pause the video and have a little think about how nature is described in this poem overall.

Off you go.

Perhaps you said nature is described as mesmerising, powerful, vibrant, tranquil, something that can inspire nostalgia and pure.

They are all brilliant and valid ideas about the way in which nature is described in this poem.

Here's how we can generate some really thoughtful ideas about how nature is presented.

We can use a quote explosion.

The first thing to do is to find a quote that stands out to you about nature.

I've chosen "shoals flashing silver, swivel towards the sun".

The next thing I do is I highlight words or techniques that made that quote stand out to me and I've chosen "shoals, flashing silver, swivelled sun".

All of those words stand out to me, and I've chosen that combination of words because of the sibilance.

So the repetition of the sound 'cause this conjures up an elegant feel to the movement of the fish.

"Shoals flashing silver swivel towards the sun." It paints this beautiful mesmerising picture of the fish swimming in my head.

Also, the imagery in flashing in sun creates a magical feel as we picture the glistening of the fish too.

So I'm now gonna use all my notes from that quote explosion to come up with an idea about how Garland presents nature.

And I'm going to say Garland presents nature as alluring as she uses siblings to emphasise the elegance of the fish and imagery to show the magical way in which they glisten.

So there I've used all my single word analysis, all my analysis of technique, and I've put it's all together to create this idea that Garland presents nature as alluring.

Garland cleverly shows how nature's magic overpowers the incantations that permeated the pilot's head in the beginning of the mission.

The majestic glistening of the fish reflect the way nature put its own spell on the pilot.

Let's check your understanding of what we've just discussed then.

"Shoals flashing silver swivel towards the sun." Which technique used here suggests the elegance of the fish? Pause the video and answer that question.

The technique in that quote is sibilance and the sibilance suggest the elegance of the fish.

Why might Garland have presented nature with a magical quality? Pause the video and answer that question now.

Off you go.

Garland may have presented nature with a magical quality, firstly to show how nature overpowers the incantations of propaganda.

And secondly, to reflect the allure of nature.

So if you zoom into the first answer, remember how the incantations in the first stanza were probably incantations to do with patriotism and honour.

Incantations that made the pilot embark on this sacrificial mission.

We see how in the middle of the poem, nature is actually more magical, more spell binding, more charming than those messages of patriotism and honour could ever have been.

Hence the soldier turning back.

Now, I want you to complete three quotes explosions to further analyse the way in which Garland presents nature's allure.

So in the middle of the page writes each quote that stands out to you about nature.

Then highlight words or techniques that made it stand out to you.

Annotate what those quotes or techniques made you feel about nature.

And lastly, put your annotations together to come up with a thoughtful idea about how nature is presented.

Remember, you are looking at quotes that show nature's allure.

So the quotes that make nature seem attractive and the quotes that seem to show the pilot being lured back home by nature.

Pause the video and complete your quote explosions now.

Off you go.

Very well done.

You have conducted some great single word analysis there.

Take a look at the quote explosion below as an example.

Did you assimilate all of your annotations into a coherent, detailed piece of analysis that links to the poem as a whole? Watch how it's done here.

The quote is "a tuner, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous." Firstly, the student has zoomed into prince, muscular, and dangerous.

This student has said that "prince" suggests nature's majesticity and that "muscular and dangerous".

These adjectives allude to nature's dominance and power.

The student's final idea about this quote is that, it may reflect the true bravery, it may reflect the true bravery is not continuing with a sacrificial mission that goes against your personal duty, but having the courage to break free from traditional obligation.

In the pilot's case, he is brave to follow his personal duty of living for the beauty of nature.

So we see nature and bravery being combined in the quote about the tuna, potentially reflecting the pilot's bravery to live his own purpose, which is to enjoy nature.

Well done on that task.

Here's what we've learned.

The pilot's national duty reflected by the patriotic imagery and rigid standard length is to complete a sacrificial mission.

The pilot chooses to abide by his personal duty to experience the beauty of life in the present moment.

The use of perspective and pronouns reflects society's attitudes to the pilot's decision to turn back.

Abundant natural imagery reflects the allure and power of nature.

And nature is shown to have a more powerful grip on the pilot than the incantations of propaganda.

I hope this lesson has allowed you to become more confident in analysing the poem "Kamikaze", thank you for joining me.

I hope to see you for another one soon.