How Is the Story Told in the Patriot?

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How is the story told in The Patriot? The Patriot is a poem about a man who has been a true partisan to his country. Yet, the public misunderstand what he has done and punish him for it. It represents the fragile state of public morale and opinion. Browning tells the story in six stanzas: each with five lines. The first stanza describes the setting of the poem with the opening line being, ‘It was roses, roses, all the way’. These roses could be seen as a metaphor for the love the man had for his country. The ballad form and rhyming couplets throughout the poem contributes to the story telling by adding to the pace and suspense. We know that the story is being told through first person narrative from the second line ‘in my path’. The narrator presents his view on the subject of his decreased popularity in such a strong way, that the audience don’t question his reliability at first. Although there seems to be another voice in stanza two, it is actually the narrator’s interpretation of what happened so this may be unreliable. The poem is written in retrospect, and shows the narrator looking back over his life and how it used to be compared to now. The narrator seems amazed ‘a year ago on this very day’ at how quickly people’s opinions can change towards someone. The narrator represents a universal character as throughout the poem there is no suggested age, name or character, however we know that the poem is set in England through the language ‘church-spires’ and ‘roses’. The rhyming couplets, ‘mad’ and ‘had’, and the ABABA rhythm add a sense of urgency to the poem which could suggest that the narrator’s time is running out and therefore makes the reader curious as to why, ‘a year ago on this very day’. The repeated rhythm and rhyme pattern could suggest that this poem follows a repeated chain of events and that may patriotic people before this narrator have been
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