Précis: The poem explores a kamikaze pilot's journey towards an unnamed battle, his decision to return, and how he is shunned when he arrives home.
Context: Beatrice Garland's poem reflects the immense social pressure brought to bear on the pilots to carry out kamikaze missions as part of Japan's war effort during World War Two. Although we may think of this poem as being about a specific military practice carried out by Japanese pilots during wartime, the poem also has a strong contemporary relevance. Instead of simply thinking of the poem as being about a military strategy in the distant past, it might also prompt the thought that suicide missions are part of contemporary conflicts too and are very much in the news.
The word "Kamikaze" (translated as "divine wind") originates from Japanese, from "Kami" (divinity) and "Kazi" (wind), originally referring to the gale that, in Japanese tradition, destroyed the fleet of invading Mongols in 1281. Kamikaze pilots were expected to use up all their weapons and then suicide by flying into their targets as a final act of destruction. It was considered a great honour in Japan to die for your country. The pilot in this poem returns home and is rejected by his family forever after, even his own wife refused to speak to him.
The poem is written both by a narrator and the daughter of the pilot. The narrator explains the events, almost translating the story, while the speaker gives a first-person account of how they excluded her father.
The poet questions at the end which death would have been better, to die as a kamikaze pilot young or to grow old with a family who shut you out.
Themes: The poem is set in a time and topic of conflict, however, the real conflict is between the rules of a societal "honour" in Japanese culture, and the will to survive and return to a family. The conflict is particularly profound because there appears to be no right answer and the pilot dies, one way or another, in the eyes of his family, if not in body, the poem explores the futility of trying to avoid your own fate/destiny. The main themes are:
The sea: the traditional way of life and its close links to the sea have a timeless quality. The pilot remembers details of the games he played with his brothers, the colours and patterns of the fish and the taste of the sea salt. These vivid memories suggest what he is about to lose and conveys a powerful sense of home-sickness. There are mentions of fishing boats, different types of fish, the "green-blue translucent sea", the shore, pebbles, "the turbulent inrush of breakers", "salt-sodden", "awash".
Family life: there are repeated references to family members as the poem unfolds.The story of the pilot is at last told to a whole new generation of grandchildren, who perhaps never met him. These references establish the consequences of the pilot's decision - his entire family and community judge him. The reader is invited to question whether the pilot is being judged too harshly and to reflect on the practice of suicide missions in war. There are mentions of the pilot's father, brothers, grandfather, mother, children.
Structure: Kamikaze is a narrative poem. It begins as a kind of report, summarising another conversation or an overheard story told by someone else. Sections of the poem are presented in italics as a first-person narrative, where the storyteller speaks directly for herself. This has the effect of heightening the sense of sadness she feels.
Kamikaze is written in seven, six-line stanzas. The poem does not rhyme and has no regular rhythmic pattern, though most lines have three or four stresses. This style, together with the regular stanza structure, allows the story to be told simply, letting the tragedy and emotion shine through, but allowing readers to make up their own minds about events in the poem.
One notable feature of the poem's structure is that it is composed of only three sentences and contains only three full-stops, perhaps reflecting the idea of a story being told orally. The first sentence runs over five stanzas, as we are told about what the pilot can see from the cockpit. We are therefore given a lot of detail, allowing us to imagine more exactly the circumstances of the pilot's difficult decision.
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English GCSE AQA: Comprehensive Analysis of the Power and Conflict Poems
Non-FictionI decided to make a book on all the Power and Conflict poems for the English GCSE exams. NOTE: This book's analyses are very long and wordy due to much information from different sources. Although they are segmented, some may not find too much comfo...
