Compare How Death Is Presented in “Hitcher” by Simon Armitage and One Poem by Carol Ann Duffy

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Compare how death is presented in “Hitcher” by Simon Armitage and one poem by Carol Ann Duffy Armitage presents death in “hitcher” very casually like a day to day event. The narrator seems to be very cold and unfeeling as if he is merely going about his day. The cold act of violence when he strikes the hitcher makes the event seem very chilling to the reader as he disregards it as a day to day occurrence; whereas in my chosen poem “Havisham”, death is presented in a very different way. The death in “Hitcher” seems to be very resentful, remorseless, and ruthless, he doesn’t care. I believe the narrator has murdered the hitcher as a way to relieve his stress due to his hectic screaming lifestyle, compared to the hitcher who has a very dreamy, free and carefree life. All the hitcher carries round with his is a toothbrush; this shows how easy and carefree his life is. He possibly envied him for this and therefore felt more inclined to attack him as a result of his easy life compared to his own. In “Havisham” death is presented as not an occurrence but something that the narrator longs to be upon her fiancé who left her at the altar. Havisham is about a woman who was deeply in love with her to be husband but when he abandoned her at the altar, she never forgave him, and now she sits in her wedding dress holding a grudge against her fiancé for what he did, and how he stopped her life at that moment. She imagines causing him pain in some of the most violent ways she can imagine. Death is also symbolised not by the end of life, but by the festering of her wedding dress that she still wears, the moulding wedding cake that was never eaten. And ultimately the idea of the death of the life she could’ve had. At that moment her future was taken from her, and she never moved on from that moment. Death is presented in rather different ways in these poems and this essay will go on

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