Love after love

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“Love after Love” and “This Room”

Love after love is a poem written by Derek Walcott it is all about finding your self and its telling you how to move on, it looks at the past and reflects all the good and bad things that had happened then. It tells you to be happy just the way you are. It also says that sad love after affair can restrict us, making us neglect ourselves but optimistic message that we will throw this off and be happy again.

This room is a poem written by Imitaz Dharker, which has a similar idea of throwing you off restrictions and constraints but more, symbolic, showing that restrictions could be anything. It is about the unrestrained joy of life.

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Both poems are optimistic about happiness.

The poems have different optimism, in love after love it says “You will greet yourself arriving” and “will smile” showing that happiness will return. Also in the text it says “The stranger who has loved you all your life” it is a clam message we should discover and cherish ourselves, it is a comforting promise of permanent love. It also says “will smile at the others welcome” implying that they are happy to see each other and they will say no words because there facial expressions will show it all.

In this room ...

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The Quality of Written Communication is quite poor. A frequent misuses of grammar and punctuation, whilst not completely compromising the clarity of what the candidate is trying to say, does make it very hard to fully understand. The candidate should be aware of their QWC at all times, because of the examiner struggles to read the answer, they are not obliged to decipher what could be very good analysis. I recommend re-reading each paragraph after it's finished to ensure QWC is consistently high.

The Level of Analysis is indicative of a C grade candidate for GCSE. There is evidence that the candidate has a good understanding of Dharker and Walcott's themes and the message they convey. What needs working on to a fair extent is the commentary of the effect on the reader. There is almost no consideration of how the poets themes and use of language directly affects the reader, but there is at least some evidence of an understanding of what the poets achieve with their poetic devices. The commentary in language is good, though the quotation style is quite clunky and may need refining - candidates aiming for top band should always no exactly which few words to pick, rather than commenting on a large line from a stanza and expecting the examiner to understand which word is being referred to. Also, some of the analysis lacks sufficient depth - what is the effect of using the line "Give wine. Give bread.". The candidate does well to make the link to The Last Supper and Jesus but to gain further marks, the candidate might consider how Jesus's wine and bread were said to be his blood and body respectively - Jesus gave his own flesh and blood for his companions. What does this say about what Walcott is trying to achieve? How does this tie in with the message of the poem? These are the questions the candidate needs to be answering to gain higher marks.

The answer given here is in response to a question that asks about the presentation of themes in Derek Walcott's 'Love After Love' and Imtiaz Dharker's 'This Room'. The answer focuses very systematically but well on a range of poetic devices from the two poems, comparing to some fair extent the messages the poets are conveying and also what themes are explored. The candidate should aim to elaborate further on the Explanation segment of the PEE (Point, Evidence & Explanation) and in some case the Evidence segments also. This is because without these to, the candidate is left making points about the poems like "the poem is very special" without commenting on why or how this speciality is achieved.