 Hello and welcome to a summary of all you need to know about the Bright Lights of Sarajevo, a poem by Tony Harrison. Now I'll explain the meaning related to this poem as it appears in the Pearson International GCSE anthology and I'll highlight literary and language devices as well as contextual factors that you should be aware of when studying this text. So let's get started. Now before I go into reading of this poem and highlighting the literary techniques it's really important to understand the context behind this poem. So do you remember that this poem is a reference to the Siege of Sarajevo which is the capital of today Bosnia and Herzegovina and the siege occurred between 1992 to 1996 in the Bosnian war. Now do you remember that the Bosnian war which happened during this time actually has very many complex causes however the most significant was due to the leader at the time of Yugoslavia which Bosnia was part of and which included Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkan states. Now this leader was called Slavodan Milosevic and he deliberately stoked tensions and conflicts between Serbians, Croatians and Muslim Bosniaks. These groups will be mentioned within this poem. Now Milosevic stoked tensions between them and these were the three main ethnic groups in the region and to bolster support for himself politically Milosevic did use nationalistic ideas of a greater Serbia which is a country made up only of Serbians and this is what of course eventually escalated into war. So what I will do is read the first two verses or the first two stanzas and then highlight important techniques that you need to be aware of. After the hours that Sarajevans passed queuing with empty canisters of gas to get the refills they will home in prams or queuing for the precious meager grams of bread the ration to each day and often dodging snipers on the way or struggling up sometimes 11 flights of stairs with water then you'd think that the nights of Sarajevo would be totally devoid of people walking streets Serb shells destroyed but tonight in Sarajevo that's just not the case the young go walking at a strollers place black shapes impossible to mark as Muslim Serb occur out in such dark in unbeat streets you can't distinguish who calls bread chleb or chleb or calls it crew or take the evening air with a strollers stride no tortures to guide them but they don't collide except as one of the flotatious ploys when a girl's dark shape is fancy to buy a boys. Now of course this opening two stanzas of the poem really highlight the tension but also the normality that underlies this tension so even if there's a lot of war that's happening people in Sarajevo are still trying to continue to live their lives as usual now in the first verse the poet highlights queuing empty and queuing and now the present continuous verbs queuing which are repeated shows just how repetitive life is under siege furthermore the notion that these Sarajevans pass is and the rhyming Kaplet gas essentially emphasizes the predictability of life under Sarajevo and especially life in siege in Sarajevo furthermore the pre modifiers precious meager grams really show just how food is in short supply this is a war economy therefore food is really really in short supply and it's rationed out to people furthermore this is emphasized with the term rationed and this shows of course that this is a war economy and life is actually very difficult during this war moreover the mention of snipers and shells this is a semantic field of war and it shows that life is really dangerous in Sarajevo it's very difficult and unpredictable moreover the present continuous verb struggling shows how arduous life is for Bosnians and Sarajevans in this war it's interesting that the poet in line uses the second person pronoun you and this relates to our assumptions so presumably we are people who are not living under war we don't understand how war is like or life in war is like and so the poet or rather the speaker is directly speaking to our assumptions about this and also in some ways dispelling some of the ideas that we may have also the sibilance street subshells this shows just it creates tension and it shows just how dangerous life is but still in spite of that people are still walking and trying to create some semblance of normality however the conjunction but now this compounds the second person pronoun because it refutes the assumptions we might have about life in wartime so it now builds up this the idea that actually even if it's at war the city is at war actually life still goes on to some degree now in the second verse the speaker mentions black shapes impossible to mark and the shadows emphasize how actually beneath all of the darkness everyone is human and the darkness masks whether they are misleam serb or croat again this is highlighting just how silly and how unnecessary war is especially war which is caused by ethnic strife moreover the rule of three misleam serb croat refers to the different ethnicities and how the war was predominantly ethnic as i mentioned before slobodan milosevic did really exploit the different ethnicities and really stoked tensions and this of course led to the war moreover the reference to darkness usually which represents a fear of evil you usually represent something terrible actually in this case the irony is that it ushers in peace in sarajevo it's actually in the light in the daytime where there's a lot of war but actually when it becomes dark there's peace and everybody goes back to some kind of normality moreover in line 16 there's this reference to different dialects relating to how bread is called hleb hleb or crew and this reference to the different dialects shows the divisions in ethnicities and of course this shows that at root one of the challenges of living in sarajevo is this idea that people were caused to not feel like they could trust each other based on their ethnicities also the alliteration towards line 19 and 20 flirtatious and fancied emphasizes some sexual innuendo so in spite of the war people are still trying to date people are still trying to do regular things that we do in the west and take for granted so let's carry on then the tender raider tone of the voice shows by signals she approves his choice then match a lighter to a cigarette to check in her eyes if he's made progress yet and i see a pair who certainly progress beyond the tone of voice a match of their test and he's about i think to take a hand and need her away from where they stand on two shell scars where 92 sub mortars massacred the bread shop queue of blood dunked across of shredded bread and lay on the pavement with the broken dead and at their feet and holes made by the mortar that caused the massacre now full of water from the rain that's poured down half the day the now even the smallest clouds have cleared away leaving the sarajevo star filled evening sky ideally bright and clear for the bomber's eye in those two rainfall shell holes the boy sees fragments of the splintered palades sprinkled on those death deep death dark wells splashed on the pavement by sub mortar shells now in these next two verses firstly the speaker refers to the tender tone and the litteration here emphasizes the blossoming romance between these two individuals furthermore there's this spark of light that's highlighted match and lighter again this shows that there's some semblance of normality that's happening in the darkness people are just smoking they are hanging out and there's some kind of romance also this romance between the two people that the speaker notices the boy who lights a cigarette it's stated he checks if her eyes in her eyes if he's made progress yet so this reference to romance shows that he's courting her just like how young people in the west state now in line 25 the narrator interjects directly with the first person pronoun I so this is the first time we hear directly from the narrator and then the narrator says I see a pair who's certainly progressed now it's unclear if this is the same couple very likely it is but it's still kept kind of unclear now in line 27 to take her hand now what this shows is it's a show of love and it's of course a contrast to the hatred of war moreover in line 29 shells scars the sibilants here highlights irony it's interesting that the love of these two people could lead to new life of course they could make a baby which is new life but they stand on remnants of death and this death is emphasized furthermore with overt references now to the bosnian war and in line 30 the mortars massacred now the litteration here really emphasizes the extreme violence of this war and the reference to mortars the repetition of mortars really emphasizes the death the destruction that this war has caused moreover in line 31 blood cross of shredded bread so this is a really gory gory language play on words because it associates what we do when we eat bread for example if we eat bread and tea we dunk the the bread inside the tea however in this case the bread is dunked in brought blood and of course this is the blood of the people that were holding it who are now dead now in line 34 there's a temporal shift now to the present to where the narrator is and there's a mention of water which is interesting because it's life-giving it's a symbol of life moreover there's in line 36 the superlative adjective mentioned smallest clouds and this is interesting because it shows that these clouds which which have hovered in the sky they are now clearing away and they're going to make it easier for a bomber or somebody who's a sniper to actually see these people but also other people in the darkness of course this shows how this romance is still intermingled with death furthermore there's the sibilance sarajevo star which shows promise but there's this promise of romance of love blooming but it's in the under the specter of darkness and death furthermore there's the mention of the bright and clear for bomber's eye and this alliteration shows that the specter of war is never too far dangers ever present furthermore in line 40 the palades that are mentioned this is actually a specific constellation of stars which reflect on the water so there's this real interesting contrast between the beauty of nature and the beauty of romance versus the horrendous aspects of war and life at war furthermore there's the a sinderton that's used death deep death dark and the pre-modifier death to show how pervasive war still is so let's look at the final verse the dark boy shape leads the dark girl shape away to share one coffee in a candlelit cafe until the curfew and he holds a hand behind aid flower sacks refilled with sand this is a really poignant ending there's some hope and promise of love romance some kind of normality in the night time however there's constantly the threat of death violence and war now here the dark boy leads dark girl shape away so there's this repetition of dark and shape and it shows the promise of new love and romance moreover the alliteration of coffee candlelit cafe creates some glimpse of normality this is what we do when we are going on dates we go and have a coffee in a cafe maybe a dinner later on so there's some kind of glimpses of normality that we would identify in the west but this is happening in a very abnormal situation of war also in line 45 until the curfew so these glimpses of normality are shattered so alongside this normality cafes candlelit cafes there are curfews and so there's a constant reminder of this war economy furthermore this reminder is compounded with these aid flower sacks and this is of course reference to the UN peacekeepers aid this is you know free food donations made from the west and of course this is again relating to war so that's all if you found this video useful we do have a course covering all the IGCC anthology texts as well as model answers for past papers so make sure you check out that course but also head over to our website www.firstrate tutors.com for lots of English worksheets English courses and materials to help you in this and other areas of English thank you so much for listening