These notes come from myself, who passed matric of 2023 with an overall average of 87% in each subject i took.
This document contains a full analysis of the prescribed Matric IEB poem: Nobody loses all the time. The poem has been broken down and analysed line by line to ensure it is fully understo...
Born in Cambridge
Studied at Harvard
Modernist Poet
Poetry breaks convention
Experimental
Non-conformist
Content is fragmented and disconnected view of reality
Requires active engagement to derive meaning
Meaning and Message
Slice of life's most ordinary
Successful farming career that didn’t work out
Darkly humour anecdote (amusing story)
Poem highlights how there are people who do not succeed in life (eg. Uncle Sol)
Highlights how in some way he finds an ounce of success eventually
Satire of the American dream
Tone
Dark
Macabre (dark humour)
"Tongue and cheek"
Sarcastic
Hyperbolic
Punitive
, Title
Implies that even a total failure has a chance at success
Ironic title
Initially sets up an uplifting idea but the tone is "tongue and cheek" and the use of dark
humour highlights how there is no real success
Lowercase "n" of "nobody"
Further enhances the disempowerment of uncle Sol
Stanza 1
Uncle Sol is an absolute figure of ridicule
Never been taken seriously
Mixed punctuation together with the sentences running on creates a sense of disorder in the
poem
Reflects the chaos and sad reality of a life lived in total failure
Lines 1:
Lowercase "u" of "uncle"
Establishes Uncle Sol as a loser from the start
We as readers therefore have incredible low expectations of Uncle Sol
Yet he doesn’t even reach the incredibly low expectations
Lines 2:
Sol means sun in Latin
Life giving force
Incredibly ironic
Sarcastic/ironic
Sol represents life/growth and happiness
Complete opposite of what Sol is
"born failure": establishes how he has a doomed fate
Lines 3:
Makes the wrong choice from the beginning
Lines 4:
Vaudevile: Supposed to be a joke
Sets himself up for failure
He always has been a joke (Uncle Sol)
Source of mockery
Lines 5:
Title of a song
Very unnecessary use of capital letters in the title of the song
Playful style
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