The Emigree (AQA GCSE English Literature)

The Émigrée

Each poetry anthology in the GCSE contains 15 poems, and in the poetry question in the exam you will be given one poem on the paper - printed in full - and asked to compare this given poem to one other from the anthology. You will not have access to the other poems in the exam, so you will have to know them very well from memory. Fifteen poems is a lot to learn. However, understanding four things will enable you to produce a top-mark response:

• The meaning of the poem

• The ideas and messages the poet wanted to convey

• How the poet conveys these ideas and messages through their methods

• How do these ideas compare and contrast with the ideas and themes of other poems in the anthology

Below is a guide to The Émigrée by Carol Rumens, from the Power and Conflict anthology. 

It includes:

• Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations

• Writer’s methods: an exploration of the poet’s techniques and methods

• Context: an exploration of the context of the poem, relevant to its themes

• What to compare it to: ideas about which poems to compare it to in the exam

Overview

In order to answer an essay question on any poem, it is essential that you understand what it is about. This section includes:

• The poem in a nutshell

• A ‘translation’ of the poem, section-by-section

• A commentary of each of these sections, outlining Rumens's intention and message

The Émigrée in a nutshell

The Émigrée was written by the British poet Carol Rumens and was published in 1993. An emigree is a woman who has chosen or been forced to leave her home country and live somewhere else. The poem explores the experience of a female speaker who has had to leave her homeland due to war and tyranny. Even though the speaker can never return to her home, it is still important to her and she keeps it alive through memory. The poet explores the themes of the power of memory, the conflict between memory and time, the conflict between memory and reality and the conflict between childhood and adulthood.

The Émigrée breakdown

Lines 1-8

“There once was a country… I left it as a child

but my memory of it is sunlight-clear

for it seems I never saw it in that November

which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.

The worst news I receive of it cannot break

my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.

It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,

but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.”

Translation

• The poet opens with a mysterious first sentence about a non-specified country that the speaker had to leave as a child

• She looks at her home city through the rose-tinted glasses of a child

• This means she can only remember the good aspects of living there, and the “worst news” she hears about it can’t diminish the good memories, which hold her to it like a “filled paperweight”

• Her memories are described as clear as sunlight

• She doesn’t remember the city in bleak times, as represented by “November” when the city changed

• We also learn why she had to leave her city, due to war or tyrannical oppression

Rumens's intention

• The opening line establishes a fairy-tale quality, similar to “Once upon a time”, to highlight the fact that the speaker’s home is described as a memory rather than a reality

• The poet is showing how the home the speaker remembers is romanticised by the idealism of youth

• It probably was never as perfect as the speaker remembers, but the positive memory is “branded" or scarred on to her skin

• Here, the poet is commenting on the unreliability of memory, and the conflict between memory, nostalgia and reality

Lines 9-16

“The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes

glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks

and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.

That child’s vocabulary I carried here

like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.

Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.

It may by now be a lie, banned by the state

but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.”

Translation

• The speaker remembers the white streets of the city where she spent her childhood and the graceful slopes that become clearer in her memory over time

• She is separated further from the city by the “frontiers" that rise and “close like waves”

• This also implies that the city is drastically different from the one she left as a child

• The speaker reflects on the fact that, when she left, she had a “child’s vocabulary” and limited knowledge of life

• It didn’t contain anything, like a “hollow doll”

• But soon she will be able to recall every word of this language (“every coloured molecule of it”), which she reflects may well be banned or not exist anymore

• However, this doesn’t erase the positive memories she carries

Rumens's intention

• The poet uses the theme of language to show how the speaker has not moved on from her childhood

• With her new home, the speaker will have needed to take on a new language and customs

• But she doesn’t want to erase her relationship and memory of her original home, which is why she holds onto her first language and childhood memories so closely

• The poet is commenting on the complexity and internal conflict of the emigrant experience

• The poem also represents the conflict between childhood memories and the reality of being an adult

Lines 17-25

“I have no passport, there’s no way back at all

but my city comes to me in its own white plane.

It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;

I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.

My city takes me dancing through the city

of walls. They accuse me of absence, they circle me.

They accuse me of being dark in their free city.

My city hides behind me. They mutter death, 

and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.”

Translation

• The speaker reveals that she has no way to return to her home city

• Instead, her city comes to her in the form of innocent memory and nostalgia (as represented by the colour white)

• The poem personifies the city as someone she loves and cares for

• It “lies down” in front of her, “docile as paper”, suggesting the city submitted to what happened to it

• The narrator spends time improving and adoring its appearance, trying to return it to its former glory

• She again personifies her city by taking her dancing through her new “city of walls”

• This part of the stanza can be interpreted as a description of the narrator’s new city, in which she feels trapped, different and persecuted

• But the stanza finishes again with a reference to the “sunlight”, in which she will protect her memories and identity from her homeland

• Her “shadow” is proof that the sun still shines

Rumens's intention

• The poet’s intentional reference to “passport” suggests the restrictions and control humanity places on borders and travel

• The poet uses a more threatening tone in the final four lines. We are not sure who “they” are - only that they are different from the speaker

• The narrator experiences discrimination and prejudice in her new home, which suggests she is a refugee trapped in a country that is not her own

• There are no specific names of cities or countries mentioned

• This creates a sense of the universality of the conflict and difficulties emigrants can experience when being forced to leave their homes due to war or occupation

Writer’s Methods

Although this section is organised into three separate sections - form, structure and language - it is important to take an integrated approach to AO2, focusing on the main themes and ideas of the poem and then evaluating how Rumens's choices of language, structure and form contribute to these ideas. In essence, how and why the poet has made the choices they have, in relation to their intentions and message. 

Focusing on the poet’s main ideas, rather than individual poetic techniques, will gain you far more marks. In the below sections, all analysis is arranged by theme, and includes Rumens's intentions behind her choices in terms of:

• Form

• Structure

• Language

Form

The poem is written mostly in the form of free verse in the first person with no rhyme or rhythm. By not using a set form, the poet explores the idea of freedom and the relationship between people and their homes, as she is not bound by convention. It could also imply the free and unreliable nature of memory.

Structure

Rumens structures the poem into three separate stanzas which explore the power of memory and the conflict between freedom of her memories with the confinement of her current situation.

Language

Rumens uses several literary devices to demonstrate the clarity and positive nature of her memories, conflicting with reality.

Context

Examiners are clear that you should not write about context separately. It is therefore important that you do not include irrelevant biographical information about Carol Rumens or specific examples of refugee crises from around the world. The best way to include context is to start with the key themes and ideas in the poem, and then include an exploration of why the writer may have chosen to address these themes and ideas. This section has therefore been divided into two relevant themes that Rumens explores:

• The power of war and conflict

• The power of memory

The power of war and conflict

• Rumens's poetry often concentrates on the relationship between identity and culture

• The main context of The Émigrée is displacement; the forced upheaval of local people and the need to flee a home country

• She wrote the poem in 1993, at a time of great upheaval for thousands of people

  • However, there is always conflict happening somewhere in the world, forcing people to leave their homes

• The poet suggests that the city the speaker leaves may be war-torn or under the control of a dictatorial government

  • Neither the specific city or country are named

  • This lack of specific detail is intentional, as Rumens wants her poem to be relevant to as many people as possible

• The speaker may have claimed asylum in the new city and doesn’t feel at home there

  • This reflects the hostility and discrimination refugees can experience in a new country

• In this poem, Rumens is highlighting the long-term effects of war and conflict on people and their identity

• It shows how so much of our identity is tied to a place

The power of memory

• The poem focuses on the memories the speaker has of their former home city

  • The city represents hope, happiness and clarity

• Childhood memories are often the strongest, but they can be unreliable

  • The speaker confesses that whatever she learns of her home city now, she will always have a positive, fairy-tale and child-like memory of it

• The poem suggests that any human conflict and aggression, which forces people out of their homes and country, can never erase human memories

  • So despite whatever circumstances forced the poem’s speaker to leave their home city, nothing can diminish the perfect, light-filled impression the speaker’s childhood memories have left

• In this way, identity is also tied strongly to memory

What to Compare it to

The essay you are required to write in your exam should be an integrated comparison of the ideas and themes explored in two of your anthology poems (the one given on the exam paper and one other). It is therefore essential that you revise the poems together, in pairs, to understand how each poet presents key ideas and themes, in comparison to other poets in the anthology. Given that The Émigrée explores ideas of the power of memory, identity and conflict, the following comparisons would be a good place to start:

• The Émigrée and Checking Out Me History

• The Émigrée and Poppies

For each pair of poems, you will find:

• The comparison in a nutshell

• Similarities between the ideas presented in each poem

• Differences between the ideas presented in each poem

• Evidence and analysis of these similarities and differences

The Émigrée and Checking Out Me History

Comparison in a nutshell:

This would be an interesting comparison because the speaker’s reflections in The Émigrée are on her own sense of identity, in a similar way as Agard does in Checking Out Me History. Both speakers suffer a loss of identity as a result of circumstances, or what they have or have not been told.

Similarities:

Differences:

The Émigrée and Poppies

Comparison in a nutshell:

Poppies by Jane Weir and The Émigrée are both poems that explore the impact of conflict on ordinary civilians, the power and importance their memories have to them and the sense of longing they have for things to be different.

Similarities:

Differences: