The Flag.

The Flag.

By John Agard.

Written in a structured and concise manner allowing for the use of repetition and rhetorical to embrace the ideology of the ‘Flag’. The poet rhetorically questions at the beginning of each stanza about the ‘movements of a flag’. This is then again for each stanza followed by the same line ‘It’s just a piece of cloth’. This embraces and presents the idea of how the flag which has such power can be just a piece of cloth. To finish off, especially at the end of the poem and the end of each stanza is a statement that presents the idea of the power of what a flag can do. Simply, it presents the actual idea of the poem.

There is no rhyme scheme but there is a structure of rhetorical questions then a statement that is repeated every stanza. 4 lines in every stanza also. It ends with a statement that presents a question to the reader of the consequences of a flag’s power.

A literary technique used by the poet is repetition. This is in every stanza where it is stated as ‘It’s just a piece of cloth’. This is trying to clarify the problem that is the delusional idea that a flag can have such power which is ‘just a piece of cloth’. Nevertheless, the reader is presented with this idea which clarifies some confusion which could have been caused by the constant idea of this poem about the power of a flag.

The use of a rhetorical question in every stanza calls for the poet to be known for their skill. This is a question (not to be answered directly) that starts each stanza and states the basics of what you may observe or know about a flag. But the poet has obviously not done this for the reader to gain this ‘useful’ knowledge but the quite the opposite. The rhetorical question affects the reader by them having to question what exactly does an everyday flag mean and do, especially in terms of power.

Within the first line of the stanzas as previously mentioned a rhetorical question is used. But imagery is also used. This technique causes the reader when faced with the image of a flag unfurling or fluttering etc, to question what exactly a flag may mean other than ‘just a piece of cloth’. The power is clearly present and therefore such imagery is useful by the poet in this case.

‘that dares the coward to relent.’

This quotation presents the immense power that a flag has even though ‘It’s just a piece of cloth’. This is key to the poem as it can be considered different from the rest of the poem. Especially, as I believe that a coward being forced to actually work (perhaps for the greater good) by the power of a flag, also known as patriotism, is intense. It represents the idea as a whole of the stupidity of a ‘piece of cloth’ being able to do such things which the reader can only think of imagine of. This cloth has the authority to make the ‘the coward to relent’, this coward may be the reader. This is a significant point to the poem which I believe may be underestimated.