Boxes Essay Writing

Step-by-Step Checklist

Step 1
• Spend a few moments studying the question. You won’t need to write about
everything in the poem – what will be your area of focus?

Step 2
• Brainstorm ideas you can use to answer the question. Aim to find three or
four ‘aspects’ of the poem or topic to write about.

Step 3
• Select the evidence you will use to support your ideas.
Sample Essay Questions • Try to pick out specific uses of diction (single words and short phrases)
rather than longer quotations, figurative language, symbols, and imagery.

1. How does Sampurna Chattarji effectively suggest the woman’s discomfort

in her poem Boxes? Step 4
• Prepare to analyse technical and poetic features of the poem.
• Technical features include anything to do with form, structure, rhythm,
2. In what ways does Boxes by Sampurna Chattarji create such a vivid feeling rhyme, repetition or sound effects. (You might call them devices or use
of being overwhelmed? another name).

3. Explore the role of nature in Sampurna Chattarji’s poem Boxes.

Step 5
4. What makes Boxes by Sampurna Chattarji so memorable? • If necessary, work through steps 2 – 4 again, making sure you choose the
best possible evidence, or a suitable range of evidence. Each of your
paragraphs could contain more than one piece of supporting evidence.

www.poetryprof.com
 Rough Notes: Boxes
Spend a few minutes planning your paragraphs: Point / Idea / Topic + Selected Evidence + Explanation of Language + Analysis of Technical Features / Devices

What makes the poem Boxes by Sampurna Chattarji so memorable?

Paragraph 1: lack of space Paragraph 2: hot and stifling

Living space is unsuitably small. The room seems to trap heat.

Room is crowded with stuff. Hard to breathe inside – suffocating.

‘a stove… an iron pan… her husband, a stack of quilts’ = list / contrasts ‘an orchid smuggled in a duffle bag’ – image
(Poem’s shape and form is crowded) ‘she is a giant insect fretting in a jar’ - metaphor

Paragraph 3: claustrophobia Paragraph 4 / Conclusion: No connection

Trapped inside a tiny room.

Trapped inside a tiny room.
Mixture of sensory imagery is overwhelming.
Mixture of sensory imagery is overwhelming.

‘window bars’ = prison

‘window bars’ = prison
‘smell of food… sing-song voices…’ – olfactory / auditory
‘smell of food… sing-song voices…’ – olfactory / auditory

www.poetryprof.com
 Sample Response

What makes Boxes by Sampurna Chattarji such a memorable poem?

In Boxes, Sampurna Chattarji describes the life of a woman in Mumbai, who lives in a insect trying to get out from inside an overturned glass jar. The image seems desperate
tiny, rented room that is simply too small for her to fit life’s necessities inside. The poem and pitiable, suggesting the woman is being slowly stifled by a lack of air.
memorably recreates an impression of her tiny living space and suggests how stifling it
can get inside. Eventually the feeling of claustrophobia is so intense that the room starts The feeling of being trapped inside such a claustrophobic space is therefore the most
to feel more like a prison than a home. memorable aspect of this poem. Chattarji combines all kinds of sensory imagery to
intensify the feeling of claustrophobia: the olfactory ‘smell of food’ mixes with auditory
Firstly, Chattarji creates a memorable impression of how unsuitably small the woman’s ‘sing-song voices’ and tactile impressions such as ‘iron pan’. The sheer variety of images
living space is. The title of the poem, ‘Boxes’, suggests her house is more like a packing is overwhelming and must be exhausting to have to live through all the time. Chattarji
area than a true home. It gives the space a flimsy, temporary feel, and implies it is uses visual imagery to place the woman in the middle of a network of straight lines that
utilitarian rather than comfortable. By repeating the word ‘one’ in verse two Chattarji seem to trap her inside: the ‘right-angled’ arrangement of bed and corridor, the ‘stack’
reinforces how she has to cram all of life’s necessities into just ‘one room’. Throughout of quilts, low ‘arc’ of voices, ‘train tracks’ all contribute to this visual imagery, and the
the poem she mentions different objects (for example her ‘stove’, ‘iron pan’, ‘husband’ detail of ‘window bars’ transforms her home into a metaphorical prison. Even the
and ‘bedding’), all squeezed up together. A contrast between the hard ‘iron’ pan and the sounds of the poem seem ‘pressed-up’ against one another: in the first line the assonant
soft quilts suggests her home is a jumble of necessity: things don’t always belong ‘-or’ sound in the word ‘orchid’ is repeated in ‘Singapore’, ‘for every morning’ and
together, but she has to find a way. Even her husband just seems propped up against ‘door’. Sibilance in ‘sing-song voices… in low steady arcs’ and alliteration in ‘trains make
the wall, as if he’s just another object to fit in! The spatial form of the poem reflects the tracks’ creates a similar sonic density. Mixing different hard consonant sounds together
idea of cramming people’s lives into separate ‘boxes’: each verse is written in five lines (such as in the line ‘two giant black pigs lie dead’) creates cacophony, suggesting how
of equal length which use every available inch of space. Inside each verse is a single, loud it can be and how little privacy the woman has because she lives in such a densely
short line that seems to have been ‘squeezed in’. Other sentences enjamb from one line packed city.
to the next, as if nothing really fits in its own space.
The end of the poem memorably suggests that this situation is only going to get worse in
As her tiny room traps heat (even in October the sun is described as ‘harsh’) the poem the future. Chattarji tells us that as ‘the city grows taller’, contrarily ‘the boxes grow
creates the impression it is stifling inside. Firstly, ‘her balcony bears an orchid smuggled smaller’; an oxymoron highlights the impossibility of people being able to ‘grow’ in such
in a duffle bag’. Not only is the idea of being stuffed in a bag stifling, the breathy- ‘small’ spaces. The final image personifies building blocks as ‘striding inland’ to crowd
sounding F in the word ‘duffle’ suggests the raspy sound of gasping for breath. The way the city with even more skyscrapers. It’s an apocalyptic vision of urban expansion as the
the plant ‘clings to air’ also creates the sense that it is struggling to survive in such a tiny, whole sky is extinguished by buildings that crowd the horizon in concrete, ‘shutting out
stifling place. At the end of the first verse, Chattarji uses metaphor to explain the the light’.
woman feels like ‘a giant insect fretting in a jar.’ The word ‘fretting’ connotes her day-to-
day worries and, through consonance using the letter T, also creates the sound of an

www.poetryprof.com