Scanlon Nettles Essay

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Scanlon Nettles This poem explores the impulse for a parent to protect a child, using whatever means necessary. The emotive language used to present the child and the violence of the father's response suggests a powerful instinct has been provoked. The poem is also about the inevitability of "wounds" being felt through life, whatever a parent may do to prevent it. The nettles grow back quickly and the speaker realises his son will feel pain again. The poem is about a parent realising that life will present children with hurtful situations, ones which cannot be avoided or prevented. Martial imagery can at first seem out of place - after all, the events of the poem are very insignificant compared to the realities of war. However, the imagery and language is chosen to communicate the idea that such incidents are significant and important in the eyes of a parent. References to war might also suggest that the battle is futile. Whatever the father does the nettles will grow back and his son will probably be hurt again, just as wars will continue to occur, however violent the attempts to end them. The nettles are personified as an opposing force. They are a "regiment of spite", and are described using the metaphor"spears". Within the first three lines the nettles are presented as a violent and aggressive group of soldiers to reflect the speaker's need to protect his child. When the speaker is taking revenge on the nettles the writer again personifies them, describing them as a "fierce parade" as if they were soldiers standing to attention, cut down by his scythe. They are even given a "funeral pyre" (a wooden structure made for bodies to be burned on instead of being buried). Within "two weeks", "tall recruits" have been "called up" to replace the nettles, a reference to soldiers being conscripted (forced to join the army), but also communicating the idea of an enemy
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