Flag by John Agard: GCSE
Flag by John Agard Pre-Reading: Ways into the poem · Find out about colonialism and independence of Caribbean islands in the 1960s · Research John Agard and his other poetry · Research countries where the flag has changed for a particular reason e.g. South Africa Language Repetition of ‘it’s just a piece of cloth’ – the word ‘piece’ implies that it is part of a whole, not complete on its own. However, the content of the poem shows that people take the flag as important on its own, without looking at the bigger picture. The fragment becomes the whole culture/ country. ‘fluttering’, ‘unfurling’, ‘rising’, ‘flying’ – verbs about the flag are in the air, transcendent, ephemeral, dominant. ‘knees’, ‘guts’, ‘blood’ – nouns about people emphasise their mortality ‘nation’, ‘men’ – collective nouns show that flags have power over large groups of people not just individuals. It presents people as groups who are ruled by a nationalistic message,