This is the most exciting prediction video I've ever made. I'm predicting checking out my history for the power and conflict cluster. Even if that poem doesn't come up, this will 100% give you the answer that you need because checking out my history compares to every single poem. So, if the named poem is not checking out my history, this video will fit. If checking out my history is the name poem, you're going to find it will fit everything and you can just pick your favorite poem. How does it work? Not only have I written 19 grade nine essays, all comparing checking out my history to other poems, I've also been to Greece to talk about the importance of history as we know it. Western history begins in Athens. Behind me is the Pathonon, the birthplace of European history. And this is what Agard is writing about. The history which we learn is the history handed down to us by historians excluding any other voice except the Europeans. Each generation replaces what has come before with their own history. It happened here. The Romans destroyed what the Greeks had built, but then they carried it forward. And that is what Agard is complaining about. We have erased the indigenous black diaspora history and replaced it with 1066 and all that. First we have to start with the poet's viewpoint. Checking out my history is about the power of colonialism, the power of British history to tell the story of what is important in our society. What does it exclude? It excludes the black experience, black Africa, the black Caribbean, dominated by white European cultures that shaped them in the 1500s to the present day. Agard's point is that the legacy of that is that black people from the black diaspora have been taught an inferior view of their own history which has led to them having an inferior view of themselves of their own identity. And the poem is an attempt to educate the British reader, both black and white, of the importance of black figures in history because he wants his black readers to reclaim their identity and he wants his white readers to realize the consequence of their ignorance of black history. So once we know the poet's purpose, we can always get grades seven and above. And the poet's purpose allows us to dive into every other poem. I'm going to start with the section on war. Now, I'm going to give you just a few comparisons to each poem or this would last forever. But I know these comparisons work because this is what I've done. I've written a grade nine essay for each of these comparisons. If you want those essays, they'll be available in the link in the description. So, I know this is a 100% doable. You can do it because I've done it. [Music] The purpose in charge of the light brigade is to glorify the British rule, the British soldier, the British colonialism. This is the opposite of Agar's intentions. He criticizes the militarism of colonialism. And yet both are subtle. Tennyson subtly criticizes the generals. Someone had blundered. And in checking out my history, Agard subtly appreciates British history, which is why he has moved to this country and so many of his compatriots and why he ends the poem with Mary Seol who came to serve the British. part of the same family. So both in some ways are a celebration of Britishness. Whereas Agard also calls for a celebration of diversity not just now but in our appreciation of the past. exposure is a deep criticism of the impact of war on the soldiers and in particular of the negligence, the indifference of the people at home, the British at home. And it is the British at home that Agard is writing to. He is also upset with our indifference to black history. You might say, "Hold on, hold on, hold on. How are these linked to war poems? Well, all the examples from black and Caribbean history that Agard gives us are wartime examples. He has a lot to say about war, the warrior culture of men, and the healing and strategic culture of women. Bayonet Charge is about a soldier realizing that king and country do not mean anything. War can only lead to destruction and death. What happens in checking out the history? Every war fought by the men is ultimately lost, but the struggles of the women live on. So he takes a different view. This would be a male perspective of war. But Agard offers us hope through the female perspective as well. In remains, we have the terrible after effects psychologically on the soldier who has fought in the war. But we also have the implied damage which has happened in the country that the soldiers were supposed to be helping. They've arbitrarily killed someone. And that's a metaphor for destruction in the country, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, that they're supposedly trying to help. This is exactly mirrored in Agard's poem. The whole point of colonialism was justified by exporting British civilization, democracy, the rule of law, education. Sure, those were great things, but at what cost? And like the soldier in remains, Agard is suggesting that black people growing up in Britain are also psychologically damaged by not knowing their true history. Poppies is about the unbearable loss caused by war, the loss the mother feels for her son. We also have this profound sense of loss with the bandaged up eye at the beginning of Agar's poem. He feels as though he has been blinded and he looks back on all the defeats of the past. Even the figures who have been victorious in battle like Shaka the great Zulu and Tuson Lover ultimately fail. This is all about eventual loss caused by war. War photographer is very much like the poet's voice in a guard's poem. War photographer is a protest against war. But what it is is a protest against the indifference of the public back home. Just like in exposure, the war photographer feels that he can no longer remain here and gets back on the plane departing to foreign lands. This is the opposite of Agard. He does not give up hope. He sees his poem as a way to transform the society into which he has settled. So Duffy's poem is deeply pessimistic. Agar's poem is deeply optimistic even though they're dealing with the same subject matter. Kamicazi is not just about war but about culture and the effects on a person of being excluded by that culture. Well, you can easily see the parallel of black dudes growing up in a British society and yet feeling excluded from it, inferior to the history that's taught in school. The effect of that exclusion is particularly fatal in kamicazi. She wondered which had been the better way to die. It is a fatalistic poem. Again, the opposite of the optimism that Agard brings when he's carving out his own identity, reclaiming it not just for himself, but for his fellow black readers. Next, we have poems grouped by power. The point of Osmandius is to criticize absolute rulers and tyrants. There is also a political parallel. Shelley is suggesting that Osmandius also represents the rulers in England, King George III. He is asking for history to wipe out the influence of tyrants like Osmandius. And he's suggesting that the power of the king will not last. Exactly what Aegard is doing. He is saying yes this power has lasted. This colonial influence still lasts now in what children are taught in schools in what people think of as successful figures in history. But Agard believes he can update that. he can introduce a new view of history and thereby change our perceptions. So his poem also is political but not just that it's much more personal. It reaches out to us as individual people to see a culture differently. Whereas Ozamandius asks his readers to protest against government to protest against royalty. London is similar to Osmandius. All the protest in London is against institutions, the monarchy, the church, lawgivers who charter every single street and sell them off. It is about the ruling classes. You could argue that Agard's point of view is similar. He's saying the whole of white culture is potentially dominant and oppressive. However, I don't think he's as extreme as that because he sees hope of changing that culture. Therefore, the white culture isn't deliberately dominant. It is through ignorance. And he can change that ignorance with his poem, My Last Duchess, is about the murderous abuse of power. It's really a patriarchal poem attacking what men are like and it is also using the Duke as representative of rulers. Agard also introduces a patriarchal note to his poems. The most violent characters though he celebrates them are male and ultimately they will fail. But the ones which last and the ones which he focuses on towards the end of his poem are female. Nani de Maroon is left a very small part of Jamaica, but she still has a free town there when none of the population are slaves and that endures. And similarly, Mary Seol is rejected by the British but still goes to heal them in the Crimean War. And he finishes the poem with her because that image of healing matches how he began with the injury of the blinding and the bandaged eye. And he's offering not just his anger but a hand of friendship. He's carving out his identity. He isn't attacking anyone else. Now we move to culture and identity. Those are the poems that most naturally would seem to fit because obviously this is all about identity, isn't it? Checking out my history. In Poppy's, the idea of identity looks at the role of mother and son. The relationship of holding on to and letting go, bringing someone up, but also allowing them to find their own way. This ends tragically because the son doesn't seem to find his own way. He is trapped by an attraction to violence and war. Agard is also attracted to that. But as we've seen, his protest at the end isn't all about conflict and violence. It's also about compromise and education. He offers us hope whereas the mother in poppies only offers us despair. Tissue is a fascinating poem because it could be about anything, couldn't it? But let's take the central metaphor. Tissue is paper and tissue is skin. These are synonymous. What is Darker telling us? She's saying that the divisions between people are only as thick as a piece of tissue paper. They're only as thick as the tissue of skin. And yet we use tissue to write our values. We use tissue to write our laws, to make our maps, to divide borders. But these are abstract and artificial ideas. And the poem is telling us, let's go beyond that. and work out what we have in common, our tissue. Underneath the color of our skin, we are exactly the same. And that's the point of the ending of the poem. Then we have Emigra. Here we have a figure who has been expelled from her own country, similar to the black diaspora experience in Agar's poem, and she has settled into a foreign culture that won't accept her. It ends in despair and she retreats into memory into personal identity but she doesn't build connection with the people in the society she's living in. This of course is the opposite of Agard. Agard is all about trying to build connection with his readers. He's all about hope. And so Emigra is a desparing poem whereas Agards offers a solution. We've dealt with kamicazi and the identity of the father who gets excluded by his own family as well as wider society. And exactly the same points we made over here will apply here. Now personally I don't think nature will ever come up. I've promised first rate tutors that if it does I will buy her a Michelin star meal because she's predicted it will come up. But let's imagine it does. What's the purpose of the prelude? Well, here Wersworth is trying to show a pantheistic view of nature. In other words, nature has the power of God. Nature is to be woripped but also to be feared. Nature gives us new views of ourselves. This is the point of the nightmares the boys has in later life after stealing the boat and rowing across the lake. It's all symbolic. Nature has this allencompassing power which feels threatening and volatile. Not so in checking out the history in that poem. Nature is gentle. Nature is healing. It is associated with the female form with Mary Sea Cole and with Nanny de Maroon. They're linked to the river, the stream, to fire, to healing, to yellow sunrise. Nature has healing properties which endure. Whereas in the prelude, there are terrifying properties which also endure. If you have watched both my videos on the prelude, you will also know that it is very heavily symbolic of sex. I'm not going to deal with that here. Storm on the island is about nature, but the whole poem is a metaphor about political power in Ireland. The ruling parliament is called Stormmont. Stormmont Island. That's the whole point of the title. So everything he's talking about where the islanders settle down under this great oppression is a way of talking about the political troubles in Ireland where the citizens are torn between conflict between Catholic and Protestant, Irish and British. You don't have to appreciate that political context if you don't want to, but if you do, watch my video. If we just take it on face value as nature, then nature attacks people. People have to defend against it and hunker down. At the end, we're told that it is just a huge nothing. The threat that we felt from nature isn't really there. Agard, of course, does not see nature as an antagonist, as an enemy. He sees nature as a friend with healing power that connects to freedom. This is the opposite. In Storm on the Island, nature equates with oppression, the lack of freedom. We've covered osmandius, but what is the nature in Osmandius? This is a kind of cheat code that teachers like to use. They try to persuade you that the sands of the desert, the triumph in the end over the shattered statue is an emblem of the power of nature. You can get away with that. But what else are you going to say about nature? Almost nothing else. So I wouldn't bother using Osamandius to write about nature. I would use Osmandius to write about power if checking out my history is the named poem. Exposure, however, is all about the power of nature because it is the elements that's killing the soldiers. It's the elements that represent the indifference of the people back at home. They don't care about the survival of the soldiers. They just care that they're off doing their duty. So again, we have nature as a deeply oppressive force, a contrast with agard. However, the poet also imagines what the people back at home are like, what the fireside is like, what the weather is like. And it's a beautiful pastoral setting. Nature can be welcoming. Nature can be hope exactly the same as the hope that Aegard attaches to nature in his poem. Now is a good time to let you know that I'm going to do a 90inute master class on comparing kamicazi to each of the individual poems, which quotes you'll need. The link will be in the description. And if you're watching in the future, you can still get the recording of the master class with the same link.