How do I analyse Kamikaze for GCSE?

What is Kamikaze about?

A Japanese pilot sets off at sunrise on a kamikaze mission, a flight he is not expected to come back from. He carries a samurai sword and a head full of the chants he has been taught, with only enough fuel for "a one-way / journey into history".

Halfway there, he turns back. The poem never says why. His daughter, telling the story to her own children years later, imagines that he looked down at the fishing boats and the shoals of fish glinting in the sun, and remembered waiting on the shore with his brothers for their father's boat to come home safely.

He comes home alive, but his wife never speaks to him again in his presence, and the neighbours behave as if he is not there. At first his children still chatter and laugh with him, but gradually they learn to be silent too. The poem ends with the daughter's thought that her father must have wondered which had been "the better way to die".

What is the context of Kamikaze?

Beatrice Garland is a modern British poet. Kamikaze imagines the life of one Japanese pilot and his family, during the Second World War and in the years after it.

From late 1944, in the last year of the war, Japan's military formed special units of pilots who were sent to attack enemy warships on missions they were not expected to return from. They were known as kamikaze pilots. The word means "divine wind", after the storms said to have wrecked Mongol invasion fleets sailing for Japan in the 13th century.

The pilots were taught to see the mission as the highest honour, a way to serve their emperor and their country. The samurai sword in the cockpit links the pilot to the samurai, Japan's old warrior class, whose code put loyalty and honour above life itself. In that culture, a pilot who came back could be seen as bringing shame on himself and his family, which helps explain the heavy silence in the poem.

How does Garland present duty and choice in Kamikaze?

The first stanza is full of preparation and ritual. The pilot's shaven head is "full of powerful incantations". Incantations are words chanted like spells, which suggests the ideas of duty and sacrifice have been drilled into him until there is room for nothing else. He has fuel only for "a one-way / journey into history", and "history" makes the mission sound glorious, a way to be remembered for ever.

Then nature pulls him the other way. Looking down, he sees fishing boats "strung out like bunting". This is a simile, a comparison using "like" or "as", and bunting is the strings of little flags hung up for celebrations. The sea below looks festive and alive, the opposite of the mission. Even a tuna is called "the dark prince, muscular, dangerous", a creature full of power and life that may mirror the pilot himself.

In his daughter's telling, the sea also carries him back to childhood. He remembers waiting on the shore with his brothers for their father's fishing boat to come home safely. That is a memory of family and of a safe return, the very things the mission asked him to give up. Garland never says this is why he turned back, but the detail of the memory makes it feel like the reason.

The price of his choice is silence. His wife never speaks to him again in his presence, and the neighbours treat him "as though he no longer existed". The children keep chattering and laughing for a while, then learn to be silent too. He has survived, but in his own home he is treated like a ghost.

The poem ends with the daughter's thought that he must have wondered which had been "the better way to die". It suggests that being shut out by the people he loved felt like a kind of death. The poem does not judge him. It leaves the reader to weigh honour against life, and to notice how much the family lost through their silence.

What do the form and structure of Kamikaze add?

Kamikaze has seven stanzas of six lines each. A stanza is a group of lines, like a paragraph in a poem. It is written in free verse, poetry with no regular rhythm or rhyme scheme. The steady, even stanza shape may suggest the order and discipline the pilot was trained in, and it holds a painful family story together.

The story is told in layers. A narrator reports what the pilot's daughter told her own children, and the daughter's voice breaks through: first she interrupts herself to name the fisherman as her grandfather, then she takes over completely with "my mother" and "we children". The pilot himself never speaks. His thoughts are only ever imagined by others, and phrases like "must have" remind us that his real reasons stay unknown.

Enjambment, where a sentence runs on past the end of a line, carries the first five stanzas along as one long sentence. It flows like the flight and like the memories, and the line break in "a one-way / journey into history" makes us wait for the destination. The sentence ends with the tuna. Then "And though he came back" opens the sixth stanza. This is the volta, the turning point, where beauty gives way to the blunt facts of rejection.

Caesura, a pause in the middle of a line, matters in the final stanza. Commas set "she said" apart, reminding us that the story reaches us second hand.

Which poems does Kamikaze compare well with?

Kamikaze pairs well with poems about a soldier's moment of doubt, and with poems about what conflict does to families. Bayonet Charge, Poppies and Remains are all strong choices.

What could an exam question on Kamikaze ask?

Kamikaze could appear on AQA Paper 2, Section B. The paper prints one named poem from the Power and Conflict cluster, and you compare it with one other poem from the cluster, which you choose and write about from memory. The question is worth 30 marks, assessed on AO1 (your response, backed by quotations), AO2 (how language, form and structure create meaning) and AO3 (context). There are no marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in this section.

Two focuses to practise: how poets present a choice between duty and survival, and how they present the effects of conflict on families. Kamikaze suits both, as the printed poem or as the one you bring from memory.

Here is an original model opening for the first focus, comparing Kamikaze with Bayonet Charge:

Both poets show a soldier's loyalty breaking in a single moment. In Bayonet Charge, patriotic ideals fall away mid-attack: "King, honour, human dignity, etcetera" are dropped. Garland's pilot seems to turn back after looking down at fishing boats "strung out like bunting", so the beauty of nature breaks through his training. The endings differ, though. Hughes leaves his soldier running forward, while Garland shows the cost of choosing life, as the pilot is treated "as though he no longer existed".

Notice that the comparison starts in the very first sentence, before either poem is explored on its own.

Key quotations from Kamikaze to learn

These six are short enough to learn, and they follow the pilot from his orders to his family's silence.

• "full of powerful incantations": ideas chanted into him like spells, as if he has been trained to think only one way.
• "a one-way / journey into history": the mission promised a glorious place in history, yet he ends up ignored.
• "strung out like bunting": a simile of celebration flags that makes the sea below look joyful and alive.
• "the dark prince, muscular, dangerous": the tuna, a powerful creature that may mirror the pilot himself.
• "as though he no longer existed": the neighbours' silence turns him into a living ghost.
• "the better way to die": the final line suggests that being shut out by his family felt like a death of its own.