My Father Would Not Show Us (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

Theme

Evidence

Poet's intention

Family bonds 

The poem may be considered an elegy, a poem that expresses grief:

• The epigraph (under the title) expresses a desire to talk to the dead

The poet depicts the sombre moment when the speaker views their father’s body in a mortuary:

• Ingrid de Kok may imply unspoken thoughts between the speaker and their father

The dramatic monologue conveys the speaker’s intimate thoughts as they see their father’s body: “his half-turned face”

A third-person description creates a distance that seems to prevent direct communication in the relationship

Present-tense verbs bring immediacy as the speaker repeats “he lay”

The poet brings the scene to life to create a poignant mood and convey the speaker’s grief

The first-person speaker refers to “us”, implying siblings: “My father would not show us how to die.”

The poem explores family bonds, yet the formal description of the father connotes to a detached relationship 

Ingrid de Kok presents the speaker’s sense of distance in an intimate moment 

Theme

Evidence

Poet's intention

Loss and grief

Enjambment across irregular lines conveys a rambling and emotional voice: “It’s cold in here/and the borrowed coffin gleams unnaturally”

The poet portrays a speaker who attempts to control their emotions but is overwhelmed by grief

Stilted expressions such as “he lay inside, he lay” juxtapose with the repetition of the blunt, formal sentence “My father would not show us how to die.”

The poem’s structure reflects the speaker’s frustrations that they do not know how to grieve

The poem ends without resolution:

• The speaker is unable to talk to their father: “without one call/or word or name,/face to the wall, he lay.”

Ingrid de Kok’s poem can be considered cyclical in nature:

• The speaker remains in the mortuary 

• The poem begins and ends with the word “face” 

• This links to the epigraph

Ingrid de Kok’s poem describes the speaker’s complicated feelings brought about by a death in the family

Theme

Evidence

Poet's intention

Family relationships 

Alliteration draws attention to the intimate family moment:

• It is oddly formal: “My father’s face”

Ingrid de Kok begins the poem with an unsettling description

Imagery portrays the strangeness of the moment:

• The room is “cold” where the “coffin gleams unnaturally” 

• The father can only hear “white”

The poem is both melancholy and uncomfortable to reflect the speaker’s mixed emotions

The starkness of the mortuary is contrasted with the sentimental description of the past: 

• The father listened to street noises in “the morning light”

• The speaker imagines a past that was a “louder, braver place” with “voices rising”

The poet contrasts the silent, cold room they are in now with a lively, more natural past to convey ideas about changes within family relationships 

The poet uses prepositions to show the distance between the father and child:

• The father is “inside”, “Behind”, “turned away” 

The poet implies the father’s reserved nature in life creates barriers between them in death 

Ingrid de Kok portrays the unexpected distance between the father and child despite the intimate event

Topic sentence

Both poems describe intimate yet oddly tense moments in a family relationship 

Evidence and analysis

‘My Father Would Not Show Us’

'One Flesh'

Ingrid de Kok depicts the private moment the speaker views their father’s dead body:

• Imagery highlighted with sibilance creates an intimate mood: “the soft, for some reason/unfrozen collar of his striped pyjamas”

• Yet the mood is strange as the coffins gleam “unnaturally”

Similarly, Jennings depicts a married couple at bedtime:

• Sensory imagery evokes intimacy: the light is “on late”

• Jennings creates a sentimental mood in the line “She like a girl dreaming of childhood”

• Yet the speaker says they are “Strangely apart” 

Ingrid de Kok examines the speaker’s inability to grieve through the matter-of-fact voice: “the pine one has not yet been delivered.”

Jennings similarly describes an aloof relationship: “How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch”

The speaker in Ingrid de Kok’s poem is unable to communicate with the father as his face is “turned away” and he faces the wall:

• The father is physically distanced from the speaker, for example “Behind” and “away”

• However the epigraph conveys the speaker’s desire to talk

In Jennings’s poem, the couple are silent and withhold their feelings: 

• The man’s book is held “unread” and the wife’s eyes are “fixed on the shadows”

• This is juxtaposed with a simile that implies contradictory emotions: “like a confession/Of having little feeling – or too much” 

The poets both examine hidden feelings in troubled family relationships

Topic sentence

Both poets question traditional family relationships 

Evidence and analysis

‘My Father Would Not Show Us’ 

'One Flesh'

Ingrid de Kok implies the speaker’s traditional childhood was not ideal:

• The speaker describes it “as it might have been”

• They allude to an alternative family life under a “tin roof” in a “crowded” and “louder” place

Jennings refers to traditional attitudes to marriage in the line “their whole lives were a preparation”:

• The poem refers to religious ideals that a married couple are “One Flesh”

• The poem suggests that, instead of intimacy, there is “Chastity” 

The poem describes unease in the family relationship:

• The speaker describes their father ambiguously with a “wry smile” and a “half-turned face” 

Jennings’s speaker describes the couple’s bedtime routine as awkward: “It is as if they wait/Some new event”

The poem ends without resolution as the speaker cannot connect with their father:

• It appears as if the father died “without one call/or word”

• The father is inaccessible (“face to the wall”)

Jennings ends with a rhetorical question to convey similar distress:

• The parents are unaware their love has died and this upsets the child speaker

Both poets examine difficult changes in family relationships

Topic sentence

Ingrid de Kok examines loss as a result of death, while Jennings’s speaker is saddened by the dying passion in their parents’ relationship 

Evidence and analysis

‘My Father Would Not Show Us’

'One Flesh'

Ingrid de Kok’s poem is irregular, using enjambment and free verse to reflect the speaker’s disordered, emotional thoughts as they stand next to their father’s body

Jennings, in contrast, shows the reliable routine of marriage as stagnant with regular line lengths and alternating rhyme

Ingrid de Kok uses repetition to create a poignant tone as the speaker stands close to their father:

• The speaker repeats how “he lay”

• The speaker describes his face as “five days dead” and “inverted”

However, Jennings’s speaker seems to comment from afar:

• Oxymoron describes the passion and former “fire” that is now “cool” and “cold” 

De Kok describes a relationship separated by death, whereas Jennings’s poem conveys distance and passivity in a marriage

Topic sentence

Both poems depict intimate moments in family relationships

Evidence and analysis

‘My Father Would Not Show Us’

‘Nettles’

Ingrid de Kok describes an intimate moment when the child views their father’s body in a mortuary: “My father’s face/five days dead”:

• De Kok refers to the family unit with the first-person plural “us”

Similarly, Scannell describes a tender moment, but here it is a moment when parents care for their son’s injury: “We soothed him”

Ingrid de Kok uses sensory references to highlight the strange and painful moment: “It’s cold in here”

Scannell, too, uses imagery to describe the sad moment the “boy came seeking comfort”:

• Scannell emphasises the boy’s innocent fragility with descriptions of pain as “White blisters beaded on his tender skin”

Ingrid de Kok uses the line length and rhythm to convey deep emotion:

• Caesurae break rambling thoughts: ”but not the soft, for some reason/unfrozen collar of his striped pyjamas”

Scannell also creates an emotional speaker by disrupting the rhythm with enjambment and caesurae:

• For example, “Till not a nettle in that fierce parade/Stood upright any more. And then I lit”

The poems both portray poignant moments as speakers reflect on a family relationship 

Topic sentence

Both poems explore complex feelings of love 

Evidence and analysis

'My Father Would Not Show Us'

‘Nettles’

Ingrid de Kok’s symbolic poem alludes to problems in the relationship:

• The title suggests the family is unable to express their emotions 

• The speaker describes how the father “hid, he hid away./Behind the curtains where his life had been”

In a similar way, Scannell uses metaphorical imagery related to the military to show damaging forces in a relationship: 

• The speaker describes a “regiment of spite” and “tall recruits”, referring to the plant

Ingrid de Kok’s poem explores the speaker’s frustrations by suggesting regret at what “might have been”:

• They describe an alternate childhood that is “louder” and “braver”

Similarly, Scannell describes his speaker’s regret and frustration:

• They “slashed with fury” until “not a nettle” was left alive

• They “lit/A funeral pyre”

Ending the poem without resolution conveys Ingrid de Kok’s message about unspoken feelings:

• The speaker cannot grieve and cannot talk to their father 

'Nettles', too, concludes with an emotional and melancholy speaker: “My son would often feel sharp wounds again”

The poets present speakers who are frustrated in their relationships and feel powerless to change them 

Topic sentence

While Ingrid de Kok presents an isolated child reflecting on the death of their father, Scannell’s dramatic monologue portrays the intense love of a parent

Evidence and analysis

'My Father Would Not Show Us’

‘Nettles ’

Ingrid de Kok’s poem is a form of elegy:

• The speaker’s mixed emotions are expressed in free verse 

In contrast, Scannell’s poem is one compressed stanza, conveying the parent’s controlled voice

The speaker’s sense of isolation is conveyed with the passive nature of the poem: 

• The father simply “lay”

• The speaker’s resignation is shown in lines like “Half-expected this inverted face”

Scannell describes the furious actions of his speaker using deathly imagery and alliteration: 

• The speaker builds a “funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead”

Ingrid de Kok’s poem presents the perspective of a child who is unable to form a close bond with their father 

However, Scannell examines a parent’s futile attempts to protect and care for their child

Ingrid de Kok alludes to a reserved and emotionless father, while Scannell’s poem and extended metaphor describe the strength of a father’s bond

Topic sentence

Both poems describe changes in a family relationship 

Evidence and analysis

'My Father Would Not Show Us'

'A Child to his Sick Grandfather’

Ingrid de Kok draws attention to a father’s vulnerability in old age and ultimately in death: “everything he hears is white” and “unfrozen collar of his striped pyjamas”

Baillie’s poem also explores the ageing process:

• Imagery draws attention to the grandfather’s weakened condition

• His “strength” has “fled” and now he is “frail” and “bended” with thin “white hairs”

Ingrid de Kok presents a child speaker (although it is implied they are adult) who stands near their father’s body and reflects on his life:

• The speaker says “This is the last time I am allowed/to remember my childhood”

Baillie’s poem is similar in that it describes a child reflecting on their grandfather’s life:

• It portrays the moment when the younger generation must care for the older members of the family

Ingrid de Kok creates a wistful tone as the speaker imagines a “childhood” where the past was a “louder, braver place”:

• Adverbs of time show changes, such as in “Now the tunnelling sound”

Similarly, Baillie’s poem is nostalgic:

• The child remembers the past: “You used to smile and stroke my head” 

• Baillie also emphasises the change: “But now” the grandfather “seldom” takes the speaker on his knee

The poets both present speakers who reflect sadly on changes in their family relationships 

Topic sentence

Both poets present painful emotions that come from loss 

Evidence and analysis

'My Father Would Not Show Us'

'A Child to his Sick Grandfather’

Ingrid de Kok creates an uneasy mood as the speaker implies the silence in the relationship: “without one call/or word or name”

Baillie’s refrain conveys the child’s nervous anticipation of the grandfather’s replies, such as “When you are ailing, dad.”

• However, the grandfather never replies

Ingrid de Kok’s poem portrays a moment of loss:

• The father’s body is “Behind the curtains where his life had been”

Similarly, Baillie’s poem depicts the moment a grandfather falls asleep or dies:

• Ambiguities convey Baillie’s themes of loss with a subtle tenderness: “Down on your bosom sinks your head –”

Pathetic fallacy conveys feelings of uncertainty in Ingrid de Kok’s poem:

• Imbalanced line lengths describe “It’s cold in here/and the borrowed coffin gleams unnaturally;”

While the child speaker in Baillie’s poem is optimistic and hopeful, they are also uncertain: 

• “You love a story, dad?” and “you nod, I think?” 

Both poets portray the uncertainty and tension felt by their speakers as they come to terms with loss

Topic sentence

Ingrid de Kok’s poem is a detached dramatic monologue, while Baillie’s direct address is personal and presents an innocent child’s perspective 

Evidence and analysis

'My Father Would Not Show Us'

'A Child to his Sick Grandfather’

Ingrid de Kok’s poem describes the father in third-person: “his half-turned face”

However, Baillie’s poem is written as a direct address: “I’ll sit and talk with you”

Ingrid de Kok creates a sense of detachment as the speaker uses formal language such as “My father”:

• He is matter-of-fact: “five days dead”

In contrast, Baillie’s poem is informal, using colloquial language to create a intimate tone: “We’ll doff our shoes” and “we’ll aye be near”

• The speaker calls the grandfather “dad”

Ingrid de Kok’s poem uses free verse with an irregular structure, making it feel  introspective and distant 

On the other hand, Baillie’s poem maintains consistent rhyme to create a steady rhythm as the child prompts their grandfather:

• Half-rhyme contributes to the child-like voice, for example “head” and “dad”

Ingrid de Kok repeats that the father “lay inside” (a coffin):

• Further barriers in the relationship are implied as the father has his “face to the wall”

However, Baillie ends her poem with a touching image of an old man’s head dropping as if he is napping

Ingrid de Kok presents a frustrated reflection on a father’s death, while Baillie depicts a child’s desperate appeal to their sick grandfather