Norman MacCaig is a Scottish poet. I have recently read a poem of his called Aunt Julia. It is a poem that creates a mood of reflection and communicates very strong feeling. In my essay I am going to explore the mood of reflection expressed in this poem.
This poem is about a young boy who is staying at his aunt's house, he cannot understand her because she speaks Gaelic and he doesn't know how to. He feels safe when he is there, even at night when it is so dark that it is almost black. By the time he is able to speak a little Gaelic she had past away and this made him angry because he had questions that he wanted to ask her. .
This poem is all about how he sees his aunt Julia, he is only a young boy, we can tell this from the way the poem is written, it has repetition in various places such as, .
" I could not answer her ".
" I could not understand her ".
This highlights the fact that he did not communicate with his aunt Julia very much. Even thought he didn't speak to her because she spoke Gaelic and he didn't, he felt safe and secure in her home.
"Where I've lain at night".
"In the absolute darkness".
"Of a box bed, listening to".
"Crickets being friendly".
These quotes from the poem reflect on how peaceful and safe her home was, it makes me think there is a feeling of total calmness at night time.
In stanza four he compares her to water flouncing in buckets, and winds pouring wetly round house ends, to me this reflects on how she moves. I think it is saying that she is always on the move and is rarely standing still.
"She was brown eggs, black skirts".
" And a keeper of threepennybits".
The impression this gives me is that she is ordinary, nothing different or outrageous, just plain and simple.
All through this poem when it is talking about Aunt Julia it is always telling us of things she is doing, how she is always moving and doing something, but in the last stanza it says.
"She lay".
"Silenced in the absolute black".
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