The Falling Leaves and - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Falling Leaves and Mametz Wood

LO:

1:To understand the poem The Falling Leaves and compare to Futility.

2: To annotate the poem

Mametz

WoodSlide2

Homework Check:What did we learn about World War I through our homework task?

What was life like for a soldier at

that time?Slide3

Who was Margaret Postgate Cole?

Margaret

Postgate

Cole (1893-1980)

She was an English politician and writer who campaigned against conscription (forcing people to join the army) during World War I.

Now turn to Page 45!Slide4

The Falling Leaves

November 1915

Today, as I rode by,

I

saw the brown leaves dropping from their treeIn a still afternoon,When no wind whirled them whistling to the sky,But thickly, silently,They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon;The title gives an impression of something natural and ordinaryUse of word ‘dropping’ connotations of falling quickly and directlyPeaceful image- a contrastAlliteration: ‘wh’- leaves seem old and ready to fallEmphasises how many are falling

Shows this takes place during WWISlide5

And wandered slowly thence

For thinking of a

gallant multitude

Which now all withering lay,

Slain

by no wind of age or pestilence,But in their beauty strewedLike snowflakes falling on the Flemish clay.Shows she is thinking as she walksGallant = braveMultitude = ManyTalking about soldiersComparing soldiers to the dead leavesPestilence= diseaseSlain = killedThe leaves were ready to die- the soldiers were not

Strewed = scattered/ spread

Snowflakes: cold/ dead

But also unique and individual

Millions of them- because millions of soldiers dead

Flemish= Belgium where there was lots of fightingSlide6

Comparing The Falling Leaves to Futility

Fill in the sheet on

similarities

and

differences

between the two poems. (These need to be accurate and detailed because you will be using this sheet for your homework!)Slide7

Homework:

Use your comparison sheet to write PEELA Paragraphs for all the boxes on the sheet

.

Date Due: Monday 3 December Slide8

Mametz Wood

http://

anthology.aqa.org.uk/attachments/532.mp3Slide9

For years afterwards the farmers found them –

the

wasted young

, turning up under their plough blades

as they

tended the land back into itself.A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,the relic of a finger, the blownand broken bird’s egg of a skull,all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in whiteacross this field where they were told to walk, not run,towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.Wasted= decaying but, also lives wastedSuggests looking after and caring for somethingThe land will be able to recover- but not the soldiersSuggests something from the past. Also associated with saints

Natural image: shows how fragile

Mimicked = copied. Stones and bones mixed together

Suggests they were let down by those in charge

Another natural image- but the guns are not natural. Disturbing image.Slide10

And even now the

earth stands sentinel,

reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened

like a

wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin

.This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,their skeletons paused mid dance-macabreSentinel: a watchman or guard- strong imageSimile to make use think of those injured and the healing mentioned in line 3As if they are supporting each otherDance of skeletonsSlide11

in

boots that outlasted them,

their

socketed heads

tilted back at an angle

and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.As if the notes they had sunghave only now, with this unearthing,slipped from their absent tongues.This should not have happened- an untimely deathAll the flesh has goneAs if they are screamingLike a bird- links to line 6Gentle action word- contrast