Kamikaze is a poem by Beatrice Garland about a Japanese fighter pilot who sets out on a one-way wartime mission, turns back before reaching his target, and returns home to a family and community who treat him as though he had died. It appears in Garland's collection The Invention of Fireworks and is studied, as part of the AQA Power and Conflict cluster, alongside poems such as Poppies and Remains for GCSE English Literature.
Studied within the AQA Power and Conflict cluster for GCSE English Literature, the poem rewards close attention to its imagery of the sea and its shift from duty to memory, since exam questions ask students to compare Kamikaze with another poem from the cluster chosen from memory, with no copy of the text available in the exam room.
What is Kamikaze about?
Kamikaze is about a Japanese fighter pilot who sets off on a mission to crash his plane into an enemy ship but turns back before reaching his target. Looking down over the sea, the fishing boats and the shoals of fish, he remembers his childhood with his brothers and his grandfather's boat, and those memories are what lead him to turn round and fly home.
Returning alive brings its own cost. The daughter's mother never speaks again in his presence and does not meet his eyes, the neighbours treat him as though he no longer existed, and the children gradually learn to be silent, leaving the poem to end by wondering which had been the better way to die.
Who wrote Kamikaze and what context matters for the exam?
Kamikaze was written by Beatrice Garland and is studied for the context of kamikaze pilots, the Japanese fighter pilots of the Second World War who were sent on deliberate suicide missions to crash their planes into enemy ships.
Knowing this history shows turning back as a rejection of a national expectation of honour through death, explaining why the pilot and his family are left permanently marked by shame once he returns home. For AO3, this context matters because it shows the power culture and nationalism held over an individual's most private decisions.
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Enquire about this tutorWhat are the key quotations in Kamikaze and what do they show?
The key quotations in Kamikaze move from the pilot's departure on his mission to the lasting silence he faces at home, passing through imagery of duty, nature and memory before closing on an unresolved question.
- "Her father embarked at sunrise": the poem's third-person narrator describing the father's departure on his mission. The formal verb embarked lends the departure a ceremonial, almost naval solemnity, separating the domestic voice of the narrator from the public, duty-bound act her father is about to perform.
- "a flask of water, a samurai sword": the narrator listing what the father carried with him. The list places an ordinary object of survival beside a sword loaded with centuries of samurai tradition, showing personal need sitting inside a much larger cultural expectation of self-sacrifice.
- "dark shoals of fishes": the narrator describing what the father saw from the air. The adjective dark and the collective noun shoals picture nature as dense and alive, contrasting with the solitary, destructive path he has been sent on and beginning the pull back towards life.
- "yes, grandfather’s boat": part of the daughter's retelling of the memory that comes to her father in the air, of waiting on the shore as a boy for the family fishing boat to come in. The short, affirmative opening word mimics a sudden flash of recognition, as though the memory arrives complete and undeniable, tipping his thoughts away from the mission and towards family history.
- "he must have wondered": from the poem's final stanza, describing the father's state of mind in the years after his return, distinct from the moment he turns back. The modal verb must signals speculation, not certain knowledge, reminding the reader that this is a daughter's reconstructed account of a question her father could never safely voice aloud.
- "which had been the better way to die": spoken by the daughter narrator, ending the poem with an open question. The comparative better refuses to resolve whether death on the mission or a lifetime of social death at home would have been kinder, leaving the reader to weigh honour against survival.
- "my mother never spoke again in his presence": spoken by the daughter narrator, describing her mother's lasting response to her father's return. The absolute never turns silence into a permanent punishment, showing how shame for failing in duty could outlast the war itself and reshape a marriage.
- "we too learned to be silent": spoken by the daughter narrator, describing how she and her siblings responded to their father's disgrace. The verb learned implies silence was taught by example, not chosen freely, showing shame passing through a family without a single word of explanation.
What form and structure does Kamikaze use?
Kamikaze structures itself as a family story passed down, since it is told in the third person as a daughter's account of her father, itself now being told to her own children, so the reader hears the event through at least two generations of retelling. This layered narration explains why so much of the poem reads as reconstruction and speculation built from family memory, particularly around what the pilot himself felt as he turned back, since no one but him could know that moment for certain.
The narrative also moves in a clear chronological arc, from the pilot's departure, through the natural imagery of the sea that prompts his memories, to the long-term social consequences he faces at home, before the poem closes on an open question. That unanswered ending structurally mirrors the poem's refusal to judge whether his choice was right.
What are the main themes in Kamikaze?
The main themes in Kamikaze are duty, honour and shame, the power of culture and nationalism, memory, family and the beauty of nature. Duty and honour sit at the centre of the pilot's situation, since turning back from his mission is read by his own family and community as a shameful failure, not as a survival, showing how deeply nationalism had shaped what counted as an acceptable death.
Memory and nature work together as the force that pulls him back to life, as the sea, the fishing boats and the shoals of fish beneath him recall his childhood with his brothers and his grandfather's boat. Family carries the theme through to its consequences, since it is his wife's silence and his children's learned quietness that show how far the cost of his decision reached beyond himself.
Which poems compare well with Kamikaze?
Kamikaze compares well with Poppies, Remains and The Charge of the Light Brigade, each offering a different angle on conflict for a Paper 2 Section B answer. Poppies gives a family perspective on conflict to set beside Kamikaze, since both poems show the lasting effect of a loved one's choices on those left behind, keeping attention on relationships and aftermath.
Remains pairs well on the aftermath of a choice, comparing a soldier living with what he did with a pilot living with what he did not do. The Charge of the Light Brigade offers the clearest contrast on duty, since it presents a collective, celebrated act of military obedience against Kamikaze's quieter, personal and shamed rejection of that same expectation.
How do you revise Kamikaze for the closed-book exam?
Revising Kamikaze for the exam means learning a small set of quotations well enough to use them from memory, since both AQA papers are closed book and students have no copy of the text in front of them. Choosing six to eight short, memorable phrases, covering the departure, the natural imagery, the memory of the grandfather's boat and the family's silence, gives enough material to support a full range of possible questions without overloading the memory with a whole poem's wording.
In the exam, Kamikaze can appear as the printed poem or as the student's chosen comparison poem in Paper 2 Section B, where one poem is printed on the paper and the student compares it with one other poem from the Power and Conflict cluster chosen from memory. Practising comparison paragraphs between Kamikaze and Poppies, Remains or The Charge of the Light Brigade, focused on a single shared theme such as duty or the aftermath of conflict, builds the skill the 30-mark question tests.
Related guides
- AQA Power and Conflict poems
- Remains poem analysis
- Poppies poem analysis
- The Charge of the Light Brigade poem analysis
- AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 2 guide
- GCSE English tutors
How the poem moves from the pilot's departure to the family's silence
The poem opens with the father's ritual departure, his head "full of powerful incantations" and the plane carrying "enough fuel for a one-way journey into history." Partway through the flight he looks down at the sea, where the fishing boats look like "bunting" on the "green-blue translucent sea" and a shoal of fish flashes beneath them, the first sign of the natural world pulling his attention away from the mission he has been sent to complete.
That memory sharpens into his childhood on the shore, stacking "pearl-grey pebbles" with his brothers while they waited for their father's boat to come in, its catch once "a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous." It is this pull towards family and the ordinary rhythms of the shore that turns him home. The poem's final stanza returns to that choice from the far side of it: his neighbours "treated him as though he no longer existed," and the closing lines show him still wondering, years on, which had been the better way to die.
The comparison question itself is covered in more depth in our guide toAQA English Literature Paper 2, which sets out the paper's format, timing and the Power and Conflict pairing options.
Who is Beatrice Garland?
Beatrice Garland worked for most of her career as an NHS clinician, teacher and researcher in psychological medicine, before publishing poetry once that career was largely behind her. Her debut collection, The Invention of Fireworks, published by Templar Poetry, went on to be shortlisted for the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection; Kamikaze is one of its poems, later set for GCSE study in the AQA Power and Conflict anthology. Garland had already won the National Poetry Competition with her poem 'undressing' and the Strokestown International Poetry Prize before the collection appeared.
- National Poetry Competition: won, for the poem 'undressing'
- Strokestown International Poetry Prize: won
- The Invention of Fireworks (Templar Poetry): debut collection, includes Kamikaze
- Forward Prize, Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection: shortlisted
Kamikaze quotation quiz
Ten fragments of Kamikaze follow, each ending where a word or phrase is missing, with the answer beneath so a pupil can cover it, say the missing words aloud and then check. Because both AQA papers are closed book, being able to finish these lines from memory is the quickest test of whether a quotation is secure enough to use in a comparison paragraph.
- Q1. Complete "Her father embarked at". Answer: sunrise, from "Her father embarked at sunrise".
- Q2. Complete "with a flask of water, a samurai". Answer: sword.
- Q3. Complete "a shaven head" and the line that follows: "full of powerful". Answer: incantations.
- Q4. Complete "journey into". Answer: history, from "journey into history".
- Q5. Complete "strung out like". Answer: bunting.
- Q6. Complete "built cairns of pearl-grey". Answer: pebbles, the cairns the brothers build on the shore.
- Q7. Complete "the dark shoals of". Answer: fishes.
- Q8. Which word follows "a tuna, the dark"? Answer: prince, giving "a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous".
- Q9. Complete "they treated him as though he no longer". Answer: existed.
- Q10. Complete "which had been the better". Answer: way to die, giving "which had been the better way to die".
A student planning a comparison can set Kamikaze besideWar Photographer, another poem in the Power and Conflict cluster of the AQA anthology.
Exposure by Wilfred Owenis a further Power and Conflict poem worth revising for the same closed-book comparison question.
How the narrative frame, stanzas and enjambment work in Kamikaze
Kamikaze is a narrative poem of seven six-line stanzas with no rhyme, told mostly in the third person through the reported speech of the pilot's daughter. The six-line pattern stays constant, whilst the grammar spills over the stanza breaks, so that the poem seems to be carried along by the memory it describes.
Each feature ties to a quotation worth keeping ready for the exam:
- Narrative frame: "recounting it later to her children" and "sometimes, she said," mark the story as the daughter's retelling, which is why the pilot's thoughts are reported as speculation.
- Voice taking over: the daughter moves from "she thought" to "my mother never spoke again" and "only we children still chattered and laughed", so that her own family's experience dominates the closing stanzas.
- Enjambment across stanzas: stanza three ends "swivelled towards the sun" and stanza four opens "and remembered how he", the lower-case 'and' showing the sentence running on as the pilot's attention turns to the shore.
- Loosened control: the repeated "safe" at the end of one stanza and the start of the next, with "yes, grandfather’s boat" between them, places a break in the sentence without ending the thought.
- No rhyme: the absence of a rhyme scheme leaves the ending on "which had been the better way to die" without any sound of resolution, matching the unanswered question.
What honour code made a returning pilot a source of shame in Kamikaze?
The honour code of Second World War Japan treated a completed suicide mission as an honourable and patriotic death, so a pilot who turned back had broken a code of honour, bravery and patriotism. Kamikaze pilots were Japanese fighter pilots expected to carry out suicide bombing missions, which explains why the family's response in the poem is silence and not relief. The mother who "never spoke again" and the neighbours who treated him as though he no longer existed are applying that code to a man they had expected not to return, a point that supports an AO3 comment on how national expectation shapes private life.
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the title Kamikaze mean?
- The title refers to kamikaze pilots, the Japanese pilots of the Second World War who were sent on deliberate suicide missions to crash their planes into enemy ships. Beatrice Garland's poem takes that historical role as its starting point, following one such pilot who is sent on this kind of mission but turns back before completing it, so the title sets up the expectation of duty and sacrifice that the poem then complicates.
- Why does the pilot in Kamikaze turn back?
- The pilot turns back after looking down at the sea, the fishing boats and the shoals of fish beneath him, memories which bring back his childhood with his brothers and his grandfather's boat. It is these memories of ordinary, domestic life on the water that lead him to turn round and fly home.
- How many quotations from Kamikaze should a student memorise for the exam?
- There is no fixed number, but six to eight short, well-chosen phrases covering the mission, the natural imagery and the family's silence give enough range to answer most Paper 2 Section B questions on Kamikaze. Since both AQA papers are closed book, quotations need to be memorised precisely, because AO1 covers the use of textual references.
- How many marks is the Kamikaze question worth in the AQA exam?
- In the AQA GCSE English Literature exam, the poetry comparison question in Paper 2 Section B is worth 30 marks, assessed alongside one modern text question and an unseen poetry section within a paper worth 96 marks in total and sixty per cent of the GCSE. No text is provided in the exam, so quotations from Kamikaze must be recalled from memory.
- Who wrote Kamikaze and when?
- Kamikaze was written by Beatrice Garland, a British poet who spent most of her career as an NHS clinician before turning to poetry. The poem appears in her debut collection, The Invention of Fireworks, and was later set for GCSE study in the AQA Power and Conflict anthology.
- What is Kamikaze about?
- Kamikaze is about a Japanese fighter pilot who sets off on a one-way wartime mission but turns back before reaching his target. He then lives the rest of his life shunned by his family and community for surviving when his culture expected him to die.
- What word completes the Kamikaze quotation "they treated him as though he no longer __________"?
- The word is existed. The line describes how the father's neighbours responded once he returned alive instead of completing his mission, treating his survival as a kind of social death that mirrors the children's later silence towards him.
- How many stanzas does Kamikaze have?
- Kamikaze has seven stanzas of six lines each. They move in order from the father's departure, through the memories of the sea and his family that make him turn back, to the lasting silence he faces once he returns home.
- Why did Beatrice Garland write Kamikaze?
- Garland has said, “I spend a lot of the day listening to other people’s worlds”, and Kamikaze tells a story relayed by someone else about an event and culture outside her own experience as a teacher and clinician. Her poetry often explores life and death in the natural world, which the sea imagery in the poem reflects.
- What type of poem is Kamikaze?
- Kamikaze is a narrative poem, mostly told in the third person through the reported speech of the pilot's daughter. It has seven six-line stanzas and no rhyme scheme, with sentences running across the stanza breaks. Its storytelling shape suits the family retelling at the centre of the poem.
- Who is the speaker in Kamikaze?
- The speaker is the pilot's daughter, who retells her father's story, as shown by "recounting it later to her children". Early on she reports his thoughts in the third person with "she thought"; by the closing stanzas she speaks as part of the family, saying "we children" and "my mother".
- What does "the better way to die" mean in Kamikaze?
- The phrase asks whether death on the mission or a life of social death at home would have been preferable. It closes the poem as "which had been the better way to die", and the word better leaves the question open, so the reader weighs the code of honour against survival and family silence.
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