Ran Ossendorp
Blackberry-Picking - Analysis
Juxtaposition rain/sun
o Could possibly represent
a conflict
o Or perfect conditions for
growing grapes
Personification used in flesh
o Sweet (use of senses)
o Cannibalism
Simile: Like thickened wine
Summers blood is a metaphor
Briars: thorny shrubs
Tinkling: light ringing sound
o Onomatopoeic
SL English 22/07/2017
Vivid colour imagery to describe the fruit
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
o Purple, red, green
For a full week, the blackberries would
ripen.
Rhyming couplet of clot / know
Simile comparing blackberry texture to a knot
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Image of desire and overwhelming craving for
Like thickened wine: summer's blood wasblackberries
in it
Red dye in blackberry leaving stains on tongues
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for o Children willing to suffer (bleed) for
hunger
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Alliteration of the B sound
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
o Possible link to b in blackberry
We trekked and picked until the cans were
full,
Simile: like a plate of eyes
Describes the ripe ones on top like a
o
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered plate of starting eyeballs
Peppered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burnedis a metaphor to show that their
hands are black and cut up from all the
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
thorns
Bluebeard folklore comparing themselves to
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
the killers of the berries
o Personification
Ran Ossendorp
Hoarded: accumulated
o Keen to gather the excess
fruit
Byre: cow shed
Cache: supply/reserve
Rhyming couplet rot / not
Same as previous clot / knot
SL English 22/07/2017
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
Alliteration of harsh consonant F
o Dissonance
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
Vermin negative imagery
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. Repeated image: flesh
o Personification
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush o Keep comparing blackberries to
human
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour
Idea .
of decomposition
o Flesh becoming weak
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
Caesura, emphasis on crying
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. o Upset that blackberries are
rotting, no longer edible
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.