Theme: The one-word title

The poet describes an

incident that gives an idea of the
happened when he poem’s content. It
was four years old
therefore the theme is
is something that
just memories, or he remembers from
refers to one particular long ago.
memory.

Memory
by Chris van Wyk
• The boy was present at a kitchen scene with
his mother and younger brother, all looking
forward to the vetkoek his mother was
making, when a frightening incident and his
mother’s scream interrupts the quiet scene in
such a traumatic way that he still remembers
it today.
• The poet uses the present tense throughout
the poem as if it is happening in the moment,
and causes us to be there with him.
 Too short to reach
Alliteration the floor.

Derek is dangling on the kitchen

chair
While I’m shuffling about in a flutter
of flour.
Mummy is making vetkoek on the Imagery
primus. of the
bird –
Derek is too small to peer over the brother.
table, He is
light and
That’s why Mummy has perched him fragile.
on the chair.
His dummy twitters, so he’s a bird
I’m not that small; I was four in July.
I’m tall enough to see what’s going on;
I’m a giraffe, and the blotches of shadow
on the ceiling and the walls
from the flames of the primus and the candle
are the patches on my back. No electricity, candle
is being used.
One can imagine the
shadows moving as the
flames flicker. The boy
sees himself much
bigger than his little
brother, as a giraffe.
 • Daddy’s coming home soon
from the factory where they’re turning him into
a cupboard that creaks, Alliteration
but the vetkoek are sizzling and growing
like bloated gold coins, Onomatopoeia – the
we’re rich! word echoing the
sound.
Reservations about the
father and his work. Tells us that the oil is very
Nevertheless, all will be hot.
well because they will eat
vetkoek tonight.
 Asks himself a
question!

This is the first vivid memory of childhood.

MAYBE -
Answers Why have I never written it all down before?
his own
question
Maybe because the pan falls with a clatter
. and the oil swims towards the twittering bird.
Mummy flattens her forearm on the table
Stopping the seething flood.
Alliteration – echoes the Gives as the image of the oil
sound of the burning flesh. oozing across the table in a
(Remember the open flames “seething (boiling) flood”.
of the primus and candle.)
We get the idea that the mother is a
caring, gentle person, which makes
her later scream more violent.

As she does so, she pleads with the bird to

fly away,
But quietly so as not to ruffle his feathers.
But my brother clambers off the chair
As if he has all the time in the world.
Sensing danger, the twittering gives way to
a wail
and the giraffe’s patches flare on the
restive walls.
Flare – means to grow
Uses the metaphor Uneasy
bigger and is what the
of the bird and flame does.
giraffe again.
Flame must have caught fire
 Mother’s scream of pain, scarred the boy’s
childhood, and is what he remembers about it
still.

Ma gives a savage scream that echoes across

the decades
and cauterises my childhood like a long scar.

Seals flesh with heat.

It is his mother's arm that has been cauterised
but he projects the event onto himself and
expresses it as his childhood that remains
scarred by the event.
Contextual Questions
1. “a flutter of flour” – the repeated f sound
enhances the image of the flour in the air
and settling and then moving again as
the boy moves his feet.

2. The “I” is the poet at the age of four.

3. He is saying he is still small, he is not

very tall, but he is bigger than his

brother.
4. Perhaps the four-year old does not
understand why his father goes to the
factory or perhaps the father shuts
himself off from his children as a
cupboard can close its doors or perhaps
the father complains about the work or
about the children and the noise he
makes is seen as creaking. This also
explains the “but; the father might
arrive and start complaining or
scolding, but at least they are
having vetkoek for supper.
5. The simile is “the vetkoek are ... Like
bloated gold coins” What the
vetkoek and the coins have in
common are their shape (round) and
colour (golden). The association is
that vetkoek is a luxury, a sign of
wealth. The boy says “We’re rich!”
6. The alliteration is “flattens her
forearm.” The repeated f sound helps
us to picture how the mother places
her lower arm on the table, pushing it
down in the path of the hot oil as it
moves towards her youngest
son.
7. “Clambers” means to climb or move
in an awkward and laborious way,
using both hands and feet. This
describes and helps us picture the
way a toddler would slowly get down
from the chair and heightens the
danger facing him and his mother.
8. The poet has said that he is a giraffe with
the patches on the wall and ceiling as the
markings on the giraffe’s back. Here he
says the giraffe’s patches flare. Literally, it
is the fire making the shadows dance on the
ceiling, but we assume that he too moves in
fright at what he realises is happening.
9. The s sound recalls the sound of the
heat searing the mother’s flesh and
the hard c sound echoes the
mother’s scream.

10. “Cauterizes” refers to the burning

and scarring of his mother’s arm
and to the trauma and lasting horror
that the event caused the four-
year old boy.