The poet remembers his grandfather in Guyana reciting Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, a poem of imperial war the boy pictures in the Guyanese landscape, broken off only to threaten the children who are not listening.
How D'Aguiar's unrhymed lines, echoes of Tennyson's poem, the contrast between the grandfather's reciting voice and his scolding one, and a surprising last word turn a poem of obedience in war into a memory of love and disobedience.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Tennyson's lines it echoes: 'Into the valley of Death', 'Theirs but to do and die' and 'Some one had blunder’d'.
Form: three unrhymed stanzas addressed to the grandfather, unlike Tennyson's rhyming, galloping poem, with the sights and sounds of battle in the first, the exaggerated recital in the second, a slip in the third and a surprising last word.
Context: Fred D'Aguiar (born 1960), born in London and brought up by his grandmother in Guyana, whose first collection, Mama Dot (1985), was named after her and mixed standard English with Guyanese Creole; Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, the Victorian Poet Laureate's poem of soldiers obeying a blundered order; and the nickname Papa-T, for both the grandfather and Tennyson.
Links within the cluster: The Destruction of Sennacherib (an old poem of battle recited), Flag (patriotism and imperial war), Colonization in Reverse (taking hold of history) and Boat Stealing (childhood memories that shape the adult).
An unseen poem paired with it might share a grandparent's stories, memories of childhood, or an old poem answered by a new one.
OCR's teacher guide reads it as a fond memory set against Tennyson's battle, in which a boy learns from the poem to disobey rather than to do and die.
OCR's question on this cluster has two parts. Part (a), 20 marks, compares a named poem from the cluster, printed on the paper, with an unseen poem on a linked theme, and rewards analysis of language, form and structure (AO2) most, then your response (AO1); an answer on only one of the two poems cannot go above Level 3. Part (b), 20 marks, explores one other poem from the same cluster that you choose, from memory, with AO1 and AO2 equally weighted; a poem from a different cluster means only the higher of your two marks counts. Neither part marks context: use it only where it explains a reading. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the part it is for.
