Themes
English Lit: AQA GCSE Poetry - Love & Relationships, topic 9.1.2
Ordinary and Extraordinary
Eden Rock contrasts ordinary events and settings, with ideas and implications of extraordinary ones.
Juxtaposition
- The poem juxtaposes the language of the ordinary – ‘old H.P. Sauce bottle’, ‘his terrier Jack’, ‘the tin cups painted blue’ - with extraordinary descriptions of light – ‘the sky whitens as if lit by three suns’.
- This gives the poem a sense of the surreal, as the narrator remembers all of these mundane (dull), ordinary moments in this surreal and unnatural setting.
Setting
- Causley was brought up in Cornwall, but the poem is set in an imaginary location called Eden Rock.
- This has implications of a biblical Eden, a perfected paradise.
- In this setting, the ordinary childhood memory of a picnic is given an extraordinary feel.
Memory in Eden Rock
Causley presents the poem as if it is a reflection on a childhood memory. It is never clear how much is real and how much is imagined.
His parents
- There is a clear sense that the narrator is remembering his parents as they were, and items from his past – but there is also a sense that they are in a setting that he has never been in before.
- His father is wearing ‘the same suit’, and his mother is using ‘the same three plates.’
- These objects are familiar, yet there is a sense that the memory is artificial - an amalgamation (mix) of past memories.
Unease
- Causley says that his parents are ‘waiting for [him]’, but we know he is not with them and the setting of Eden Rock is an imaginary one.
- Therefore, the reader is left feeling uneasy as to how much is real - there is never any sure footing in this poem.
Test yourself on Themes
Complete these quotes from Eden Rock
Where was Charles Causley brought up?
What does the imagined setting of Eden Rock have implications of?
Is the setting of Eden Rock imagined or real?