Style variation within a poem
Question 1:
We agree in general terms with what is said at the above website. The
poem seems to be making the point that, although we tend to assume that
nice people look nice, and nasty people look nasty, there is no such automatic
connection between how people look and what they are like. Cohen does
this through the juxtaposition of a markedly anodyne description of one
of the twentieth century's most monstrous war criminals and the set of
rhetorical questions which follow that description. But this interpretative
statement is merely a brief summary of the poem. We hope to show you that
thinking about the poem in more detail (and in particular the Noun Phrases)
will help you to understand and appreciate it more deeply.
Question 2:
The first part of the poem reminds us of identity cards and passports.
This is partly because of the layout on the page. The 'topics' are in
a list on the left-hand side of the poem and the 'comments' on those topics
appear in a linked list on the right. This format mimics the kind of layout
we expect to find in identity cards. Effectively, it makes it easy for
a border guard or other official to check whether the person holding the
identity card has the features claimed for that person. This graphological
structuring is normal for identity cards but very unusual for poems, thus
calling attention to itself in the context of a book of poems.
The relationship between each line of the two columns appears to be that
between the headword of a Noun Phrase (the left-hand column, e.g. 'height')
and a modifier of that head noun (the right-hand column, e.g. 'medium'),
or of a very elliptical question (e.g. 'what is the number of his toes?')
and the answer to that question (e.g. 'ten'). But pragmatically many of
the items listed in the left-hand column don't seem to be very relevant
to situations where identity cards are used. For example, if you are trying
to identify someone, you would be unlikely to consider their weight or
hair colour, as these attributes can easily change, or be changed. Similarly,
you would be unlikely to count the number of fingers and toes as, for
almost everyone, the answer would be identical (and you would have to
go to the trouble of removing someone's footwear to count their toes!).
Intelligence (line 8) is not something that can be determined at all by
a rapid visual check. Moreover, the relationship between what occurs in
the two columns is also semantically and/or pragmatically odd. 'Medium'
is neither a semantically normal nor a pragmatically useful modifier for
'eyes', for example, and it is not pragmatically useful to hear that some
particular person has ten fingers because we assume that almost everyone
has this number.
It is this sort of information in the 'identity card' part of the poem
which, when added to our knowledge of Eichmann's crimes against humanity,
leads us to infer that, although he was thought of as a monster he did
not look like one.
Question 3:
The poem changes suddenly from the 'identity card' format to a string
of questions. This big structural change clearly needs explanation. We
appear to move from a description of Eichmann to a 'conversation' between
the 'speaker' of the poem and someone else, of whom the speaker asks rhetorical
questions, about what the other person expected Eichmann to look like.
Given that no other person is mentioned we are likely to assume that the
speaker is addressing us directly. The fact that the two parts of the
poem are both internally consistent also suggests that we will need to
compare and contrast the two parts in order to understand the text.
The last four questions appear to be 'echo questions' of suggested possible
answers to the first question. This is where the 'rhetorical' feel in
the last part of the poem comes from. We know this because, unlike the
first question, these questions do not have an interrogative grammatical
structure. Instead they merely consist of noun phrases followed by a question
mark. The content of these 'echo questions' are attributes that people
expect monsters to have (they are typical attributes of the monsters found
in horror films). The fact that they appear to be echo questions leads
us to the conclusion that the speaker in the poem assumes that these are
attributes we would normally expect to associate with monsters like Eichmann.
It is the contrast between (a) the way in which Eichmann is (peculiarly)
portrayed as looking normal in the first part of the poem and (b) the
rhetorical challenge to the assumption that he would have the features
of a monster in a horror film in the second part of the poem, that lead
to the final inference which gets us to our overall interpretation of
the poem, an interpretation which makes it clear that the title of the
poem is ironic. What Eichmann looked like was not all there was to know
about him. Despite what we often unthinkingly assume, people who look
nice are not necessarily nice. Notice how we have now moved from a poem
ostensibly about Adolph Eichmann to one where what we notice about anyone's
appearance is not necessarily a good indicator of what they are like.
This final movement to a generalisable interpretation is very common in
our understanding of literature. Note that this poem uses Noun Phrases
inventively in both parts of the poem. They are used to create the 'peculiarly
normal' account of Eichmann in the first part, and also the rhetorical
'echo question' structure in the second part.
A published discussion of this poem can be found in Mick Short and Chris
Candlin's 'Teaching study skills for English Literature' in Mick Short
(ed.) (1998) Reading, Analysing and Teaching Literature, Longman, pp 178-203.
This article can also be found in Chris Brumfit and Ronald Carter (eds)
(1986) Literature and Language Teaching, Oxford University Press, pp.
89-109.
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