The Manhunt Relationship is the connection between two people. In ‘The Manhunt’ Simon Armitage explore the relationship between a wife and her husband, an injured solider who has just returned from battle. In ‘Nettles’ the poem explores the relationship between a father and his young son who has fallen into a bed of stinging nettles. Both poets explore the compassion felt by the narrator of the poem for the other person in the relationship. In ‘The Manhunt’ the narrator’s compassion is for the mental anguish which the husband is obviously suffering.
Finally, it will analyze the way he uses characters and settings to create a believable world that draws the reader into his greater theme. William Faulkner has several re-occurring character types that appear throughout his novels and short stories. One of the most dominant character types is the unfit father figure. In the novel As I Lay Dying, the narrator leads the audience to believe that Anse is leading the family on a journey to bury his lost wife as her dying wishes; however, Anse is the exact opposite. He uses his family throughout the story to achieve selfish benefits.
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.
Simon Armitage's poem 'Manhunt' talks about a relationship being different after the husband returns from war, and the wife is trying to get them back to how they were before hand. This poem is also known as 'Laura's Poem' because it was originally aired as part of a documentary called 'Forgotten Heroes: The not dead' which looked into the lives of soldiers and their families affected by war and injury. It was read by Laura, the wife of a soldier who was discharged due to injury and depression. Armitage writes 'after passionate nights and intimate days', this suggests that the relationship is sexual because of the word 'passionate' however 'intimate' suggests that they're taking their time. This makes me think that the speaker is trying to get to know her partner again, like it's a brand new relationship with a brand new person.
In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien employs indirect characterization through imagery and refrain to illustrate a collective brutal rite of passage for young American men. The audience is exposed to the protagonist’s, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, experiences in the Vietnam War as he reminisces about a girl named Martha, develops a closer relationship with his comrades, and further understands the horrors of war. At the beginning of the war Jimmy is withdrawn emotionally and inexperienced; by the end of the war he sacrifices his love and fantasy for Martha for the protection and safety of his men. In this story O’Brien uses the description of specific items to give the reader a better understanding of the key characters. Using a repetitive
The Manhunt by Simon Armitage This poem is about a wife who is trying in vain to care for her husband who has been severely injured in war, and she is talking about his injuries. First off this type of poem is known as a ‘Laura’s Poem’, because it is written from the point of the wife, the use of ‘The’ in the title of the poem is a definite article, rather than just calling it ‘Manhunt’. The first and second stanza are suggestive of the story, the structure of the poem, is progressive, as each stanza is made up of two lines, a couplet. The progressive nature of the structure suggests that he is slowly coming to trust his wife to look after him, and she says ‘after the first phase, after passionate nights and intimate days’, this suggests that he has only just come back from the front line, and that she will still love him no matter what he looks like, as the poem uses strong metaphors to describe the injuries that he has injured. In the second stanza, she says ‘only then would he let me trace’, this tells the reader how sever his injuries are and how he is only now coming to trust her enough to look at his injuries, and she describes a ‘frozen river which ran through his face’.
Both seem to be condemning this unfair outcome of war on individual peoples’ lives. “Disabled”, a poem written by Wilfred Owen, tells the story of a boy, excited to join the war, to earn his glory, who suffered grievous injuries in service and came home, not to the cheering and pride he had anticipated, but to people who “inquired about his soul”, and exiled him from normal society. This same theme is apparent in ‘Regeneration’ when Sarah comes across the mutilated soldiers at the back of the hospital, in chapter fourteen. Sarah feels anger at their treatment “If the country demanded
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”.
The theme of Family Loyalty is expressed in Foyle’s war in a number of ways. Family Loyalty is expressed when Foyle reads a letter from his son who is serving in the army and by Ian Lane when he brings his sons body back from Dunkirk. Family disloyalty is expressed when Milner’s wife Jane cannot handle the fact that her husband has a fake leg, the scene in the kitchen expresses to the viewer that Paul and Jane Milner’s marriage is breaking down through quick camera shots, tense conversation and camera angles. In this episode, Stanley expresses deep family disloyalty. He doesn’t seem to care that his mother died.
Where William Broyles brags that war has allowed him to explore regions of his soul that other men most likely will never explore, the movie shows the devastative effects that war can have on loved ones and the soldiers themselves. For example, at the end of the movie, a mother reads a letter that her son’s comrade wrote about him after his death. This wrenching example is shown at the end of the movie in order to solidify the sense of loss associated with war. In fact, the other texts and songs we analyzed in class, such as “John Brown” by Bob Dylan, share the same perspective on war with the movie: the loss of the futures of so many brave young men is not worth the thrill that Broyles speaks of with sadistic nostalgia. In addition, this same thrill that Broyles speaks of can also have long lasting effects on the soldiers, in the form of PTSD.