Assisi by Norman MacCaig

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Assisiby Norman MacCaig
Success Criteria I will successfully annotate my
poem.

• I will learn about the poem 'Assisi'.
• I will build my analysis skills.

2
Initial Response

• What did you enjoy about the text?
• What images were the most striking and why?
• What do you think are the main ideas and themes?
• What did you notice about the way it is written?

3
Background

• Assisi is a town in Italy. Can you think of
  anyone you would associate Assisi with?
• St Francis of Assisi is a very famous saint, who
  is the patron saint of animals.
• He abandoned his life of luxury and after working
  and living with the poor, decided to live in
  poverty in order to devote himself to God.
• With this is mind, let's read the poem...

4
The poem...

• The poem, again, is structured in free verse
  which allows a far more free approach to the
  telling of the story.
• The speaker is on a visit to Assisi, visiting the
  famous Renaissance churches, when he sees a poor
  beggar begging on the steps of the church.
• This leads him to a much deeper revelation about
  poverty and hypocrisy. We would consider these
  ideas to be the theme.

5
The poems main point

• MacCaig wonders why the priest is looking after
  the needs of the tourists and is ignoring the
  needs of the dwarf.
• He realises that the spirit of St Francis is not
  found inside the church, or in the priest but in
  the inner beauty of the dwarf.

6
The focus...

• The poem has 4 distinct focuses and in the
  following order -
• The dwarf
• The priest
• The tourists
• The dwarf

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The dwarf with his hands on backwards/sat,
slumped like a half-filled sack/

• The opening lines create a horrible image that
  conveys how twisted and deformed this person is.
• Alliteration of 's' implies something that is
  deflated, empty.
• Simile compares him to a half-filled sack,
  something that is unattractive and shapeless.
• The mention of the dwarf makes it evident that he
  will be the focus of the first stanza.

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On tiny twisted legs from/ which sawdust might
run/

• Alliteration of 'T' is literally uncomfortable to
  say, suggesting that the dwarf is continuously
  uncomfortable.
• The second line continues the idea of the sack,
  suggesting the dwarf is weak and lifeless.
• The image is created of the dwarfs legs being
  wooden-like, as though turned on a lathe,
  creating a twisted effect.

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outside the three tiers of churches built in
honour of St Francis, brother of the poor,
talker with birds, over whom he had the
advantage of not being dead yet.

• Irony is used here, in the narrative development,
  as the dwarf is begging outside a church built in
  honour of someone who loved the poor. There is
  evident hypocrisy here.
• The tone is one of derision when he talks about
  the only difference between the dwarf and the
  saint being that the dwarf is not yet dead. The
  use of advantage conveys this tone of derision,
  as we know he has no advantages.

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Stanza 2...

• A priest explained
• how clever it was of Giotto
• to make his frescoes tell stories
• that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
• of God and the suffering
• of His Son. I understood
• the explanation and
• the cleverness.

• The focus shifts to the priest, who is leading a
  tour around the church.
• Explaining to tourists how the artist Giotto
  told the story of the goodness of God through
  frescoes
• I understood the explanation and the cleverness

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...cleverness...

• The use of this word is ambiguous. The artist,
  Giotto is clever because he was an artist who was
  able to convey this. But the second meaning is
  that the priest is clever in commercialising, and
  using the history of St Francis, to make money.
• Enjambment is used to highlight '...and the
  cleverness', conveying that is the speaker's
  overwhelming impression.
• The short, sharp sentence structure of I
  understood... highlight the derisive tone.

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Stanza 3

• The focus shifts from the priest to the tourists
  and helps us understand why hypocrisy is apparent
  in this ironic situation. MacCaig explores the
  tourists' ignorance through an extended metaphor.
  

13
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered the grain
of the Word.

• MacCaig uses the image of hens
• a rush of tourists clucking contentedly
  (alliteration of letter c helps you to hear the
  noise they make)
• Fluttered suggests they are lightweight, not
  thinking much
• scattered the grain of the word the grain is
  now for the tourist, not the poor, as St Francis
  would have wanted

14
It was they who had passed the ruined temple
outside,

• The poet compares the dwarf to a temple, in a
  metaphor that implies he is sacred and holy.
• The word choice of ruined suggests that the
  poet feels he has been devastated, broken etc.

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whose eyes wept pus, whose back was higher than
his head, whose lopsided mouth

• The dwarf is outwardly revolting, as conveyed by
  the description that builds on the idea of
  'ruined'
• eyes wept pus
• back higher than his head
• lopsided mouth
• This is MaCaig's attempt to show us that he is
  unsightly and thus, something the tourists would
  choose to ignore. This description develops the
  idea that he is repulsive.

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said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child's
when she speaks to her mother or a bird's when
it spoke to St Francis.

• However he is inwardly beautiful and this is what
  the speaker becomes aware of...
• The simile used highlights for us the innocence
  of the dwarf and the beauty that is inside him.
• He is also compared to a bird a creature that
  St Francis would have loved.
• The spirit of St Francis does not lie in the
  church building, or in the priest, but in the
  dwarf and the speaker comes to recognise this.

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Hypocrisy

• Hypocrisy is explored on a very evident level
  outside a grand and very beautiful church that is
  dedicated to a man who loved the poor, a dwarf
  begs for cash while tourists wilfully pay to see
  the church.
• The comment here is about the hypocrisy of us as
  humans and how we are only attracted to that
  which is appealing, rather than real.