Compare how poets use language to present feelings in “The Manhunt” and one other poem (Nettles) In ‘Manhunt’, Simon Armitage uses rhyme to reflect the togetherness of a relationship. He says “After the first phase, after passionate nights and intimate days.” As the poem goes on, the reader can start to recognise that the un-rhymed cuplets show how fragmented their relationship has become. In ‘Nettles’ Vernon Scannell uses elements of nature, the nettles, to portray his keen anger towards the pain his son is going through. At the beginning of the poem, Scannell uses soft ‘s’ sounds to emphasise the soothing of his injured son who has fallen in a nettle bed. The child is presented using emotive language.
Caring for others is an important aspect of many relationships. Compare how caring for a loved one is presented in ‘The Manhunt’ and one other poem from the Relationships cluster. Both ‘The Manhunt’ by Simon Armitage and ‘Nettles’ by Vernon Scannell use military imagery to describe how the protagonists care for people close to them – ‘The Manhunt’ describes how a wife tends the physical and mental damage caused by her husband’s service in Bosnia, while ‘Nettles’ is a portrait of a father who wants protect his son, not only from hazards like stinging nettles but also from other things which may cause him pain later in life. ‘The Manhunt’ starts by describing the difficulty which the wife faces in getting both physically and emotionally close to her husband after he returns home injured. It takes time and patience, illustrated by the repetition of the phrase ‘Only then...’ in stanzas 2, 3 and 7.
Relationships often consist of many layers which are strongly depicted by poets. The writers of ‘Manhunt’ and ‘Quickdraw’ present them very effectively. In ‘Manhunt’, the narrator speaks of her relationship with her husband, a soldier who has returned from war with physical scars; whereas, the narrator of ‘Quickdraw’ expresses an intensely painful relationship as a result of her lovers inconsiderable amount of phone calls and texts. Both poets use emotive language to convey the immense pain suffered in their relationships. In ‘Manhunt’, instead of using a cliché representation of a soldier (powerful and well-built), Armitage chooses to characterize the persona’s husband as weak and fragile, “the damaged, porcelain collar-bone”.
In the novel ‘Ransom’ written by David Malouf, it shows the strength, bravery and also the frailty of Priam on his journey to bring home his son Hectors body from his killer Achilles. As a reader we come to see the importance of relationships and how much they can impact vengeance and wrath. Achilles learns to deal and overcome loss and mortality. There is continually an underlying presence of war and masculinity and storytelling throughout Ransom. Achilles loss of his brother affects his sanity and enrages him to an inhumane vengeance on Hectors body.
Nettles is initally about parental love and a family relationship. There is a feeling of war and revenge with links to the military. The boy featured within the poem is a metaphor for the army and there is an extended metaphor of bad memories. There is a sense of protection throughout this poem and on the 11th and 12th lines, the nettles references could be replaced with soldier references. The openning states the specific age of the boy similar to Harmonium.
Later in the novel, we learn of Heathcliff’s childhood and his struggles with Hindly as well as love for Catherine. Because of Hindly’s harshness the audience is able to feel sympathy for Heathcliff. And again when Earnshaw, Heathcliff’s adopted father passes. The more negative side of Heathcliff’s character comes out when Catherine becomes engaged to Edgar Linton. In an attempt to get back at Hindly for his cruelty Heathcliff purposely lends him money so that he will fall deeper into dept, because of his alcoholism.
Simon Armitage’s, ‘The Manhunt’ and Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Hour’ both use strong feelings to emphasize their core messages. While each author takes a different perspective on the nature of these feelings, in the end, both poems have an intense feeling of love at their core. Armitage’s ‘The Manhunt’ is about a soldier coming home from the war with various injuries. It is told from the point of view of the wife/girlfriend of the soldier. As she slowly helps him recover from his physical wounds, she realises that not only does this require great patience and sensitivity but that his most severe wounds might be in his mind.
This is normally used to illustrate the ringing of funeral bells, giving the line a sinister tone, and foreshadows Heaney’s brother’s death. In line four, the poet’s father is “crying”. Heaney uses this instead of sobbing or weeping because “crying” has strong connotations of extreme grief, reflecting his own emotions. He also refers to the time twice throughout the poem. When people are distressed, they often notice minute details subconsciously, and this reinforces how much sorrow Heaney is experiencing.
His guilt over the death of his beloved wife and son during World War 2 is a crucial event in which shaped the present Keller. He decides to remove his past and begin a new future in Darwin, however he lost some of his previous qualities in order to start fresh. One of these qualities was his love for romantic music. When Paul visits Vienna, he finds out that ‘Eduard loved the romantics.’ However after the concentration camp, Keller had hatred towards them as it clearly reminded him of the horrors he faced during that time. This accentuates how much guilt the man carries among himself and helps define who he truly is during the novel.
By using a sonnet, a touch of irony is used. The conventional function for a sonnet is love, but this sonnet has a theme of a love that has turned bad. The young male population have so much patriotic love and are so eager to serve, but this love turns sour. They spend time rotting in the wastes of the trenches, only to be mown down by a machine gun nest. Not only are their lives wasted, gone without the holy ritual of funeral, but the lives of their loved ones at home are also ruined.