Revision RTC Questions for A Photograph by Shirley Toulson

 Answer the following extracts carefully and answer the questions that follow: 3X1=3 marks

1. And she the big girl - some twelve years or so.
    All three stood still to smile through their hair
    At the uncle with the camera. A sweet face,
    My mother's, that was before I was born.
    And the sea, which appears to have changed less,
    Washed their terribly transient feet.

    a) Who is the "big girl"?
    b) The poetic device used in the second line is?
         i) Assonance
         ii) Consonance
         iii) Refrain
         iv) Metaphor

    c) How are their feet transient?

    d) Who is the fourth person?

2. Some twenty - thirty - years later

    She'd laugh at the snapshot. "See Betty

    And Dolly," she'd say, "and look how they

    Dressed us for the beach." The sea holiday

    Was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry

    With the laboured ease of loss.

     a) How old was the poet's mother?

     b) What did the poet's mother laugh at?

          i) The uncle for his funny pose

          ii) The daughter for her curiosity

         iii)  The dresses of the three girls

         iv) The memory of the beach holiday

      c) Fill in the blank.

          The word wry means _________

      d) The expression "Both wry with a laboured ease of loss" means

           i) People try to carry loss with dignity, maybe even humor,

              but the effort shows.

          ii) A subtle, perhaps ironic or resigned response to grief or sorrow.

          iii) Both i) and ii) are correct

          iv)  A feeling of regret, and anger at loss.

3. Now she's been dead nearly as many years

    As that girl lived. And of  this circumstance
    There is nothing to say at all.
    Its silence silences.

    a) Who does "that girl" refer to?

    b) Identify the best option that suggests the type of feeling these lines 

        evoke.

         i) Nostalgia and happiness

         ii) Peace and solace

         iii) Joy and remembrance

         iv) Loneliness and grief

      c) What poetic device is used in the last line?

      d) Why is there nothing to say about the death of the poet's mother?

          i) The poet is confused.

          ii) The poet is not in her senses.

          iii) The death of the mother has left a deep void in the poet's heart.

          iv) The poet did not have a good relationship with her mother.