Year 10 GCSE Course Work Essay
‘Presents from my aunts in Pakistan’ and ‘Search for My Tongue’
From reading both of the poems I can see that both of the poems describe how they have either lost or are losing part of their identity. Identity can mean anything from our age, gender, race, personality, religion, social position, language or even personality. Identity is either what makes a person different from other people but some elements of your identity might make you the same as other people such as your nationality or religion. Some of our identity can be set at birth and can’t be changed in anyway this could be race. Whereas other elements such as social position can continuously change throughout your life. Some changes in or identity we welcome and some we don’t. Both of these poems explore changes in their identity. In Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan the young female is telling us how she is changing in the way that she lives and dresses whereas in Search for My Tongue the poet I telling us how she is losing her identity by the loss of her first language.
These two poems are laid out quiet differently, although they both use variable line length. In Presents from Pakistan the lines start all over the place and there is no certain point at which they have to start. In Search for My Tongue all the beginnings of the lines start at one place this is because the poem is left justified. This gives Search for My Tongues a stronger rhythm than it would have if it wasn’t left justified, whereas Present from my Aunts in Pakistan gives us a feeling that she is confused and doesn’t know where to start. I don’t feel as if either of the poems have a rhymes this is because they do not contain rhyming couplets or any rhythmic devices. Presents from My Aunts In Pakistan seems to be much more like a conversation with either herself or with a close friend, but Search for My Tongue seems much more like a letter of complaint. In the case of Search fore My Tongue the poet uses her mother tongue and Cyrillic writing and English character in her language. This emphasises both of the tongues. In Presents form My Aunts in Pakistan she is often putting the adjective after the noun. This defers from the standard English language. In both of the poems there is lots of punctuation missing. Both of these poets don’t feel as if the punctuation is really important to emphasis the problems about their identity. Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan tells us where she comes from whereas Search for My Tongue don’t tell us where she came from and leaves it a mystery.
