A Subaltern’s Love Song

750 Words3 Pages
A Subaltern’s Love Song Novermber 28, 2011 Reader-Response Approach When I read an article, book, or any other type of writing in order for it to keep my interest, I can one way or another related to a story. It needs to capture my own imagination even if it’s fictional or non-fiction. I basically have to be involved in what the author is writing about. This is why I pick the poem A Subaltern’s Love Song (1945) John Betjeman. I can related to this poem, it is about a story of love, and it end with two lovers in engaged. I have been dating my partner for 4 years now and the way John Betjeman talk about the talks and walks and when they have falling in love makes me remember my own love story. I have been able to “find a personal link and creative items in the story” (R. Wayne Clungston (2010). I can relate this to my own love story. There are things that I did not relate to, how the woman in the poem appears to be much higher in the financial class. I do not spent time in country clubs and I do not spend time playing tennis. The word “subaltern” means “Lower in Rank” The Free Dictionary (2011), I would believe the man is speaking about his love for this woman who is in a lower class or ranking in society, and I can relate to this simply because I work and my partner is on social security, making her a lower class. He could of also been an “subaltern” in the opening of the poem he loses to her at tennis and is “mad”, “sad”, but also “glad that she won” the game. This expresses the tension between the poet’s personality and the admiration of his lover which will automatically undermine him. In the poem the character of Mrs. J. Hunter Dunn is based on a real Joan Jackson, a real life friend of Betjeman. This poem is centered on the instant passion of the writer who as a friendship that last almost fifty years. In this poem the writer
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