In stanza two the first sentence is ‘No hope.’ It is short blunt and to the point. This could be seen as not serious and insensitive however there is emotion there. The speaker feels like this is the end; we feel sympathetic towards the man who has no hope left. The way ‘his wife stands timidly by’ suggests emotion also; she is scared to say anything, she doesn’t know what to say to him. Then Betjeman starts talking about the architecture again. This could be seen as insensitive; a man has just been told he is dying and the poet is talking about ‘steady’ chimneys and ‘a mackerel sky’ suggesting a calmness and stableness.
‘No hope’ is repeated again in the third stanza. This is to emphasize his feelings and emotions. The speaker says that this scene of London will survive longer than he will. ‘Oh merciless, hurrying Londoners! ... to me?’ sounds melodramatic which makes him sound like he is overreacting. This takes away the earnestness and suggests to us that maybe he isn’t as ill as he is making out, he may have ‘the X-ray photographs under his arm’ but by being overly dramatic it takes the seriousness out of the poem.
The final stanza shows more genuine emotion than the rest of the poem. His wife takes his hand and reminds him of good times to distract him. The real meaning of the poem is about their time together; their marriage and how they cope, not the bad news that he receives about his terminal illness. This is real emotion, deep emotion and love and in this verse Betjeman shows that he can write seriously as well as earnestly.
The second poem I am gong to write about is ‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man’. The deaf man in this poem is John Betjeman’s father and this poem was written after his death. He’s looking at his father’s portrait asking God why it happened.
Throughout this poem, Betjeman does not write seriously about his father at all. He says he had an ‘egg-shaped head’ and wore ‘loosely fitting clothes’ amongst other things. This gives us an almost comical view of his father. Bearing in mind his father has died, Betjeman seems to be talking about him as if he were a joke. In the title Betjeman calls him a deaf man. He does not say my father or anything else but deaf man. This suggests that maybe this is what Betjeman remembers him as, a deaf man. This itself shows lack of respect for his father.
Throughout the poem Betjeman vividly describes images of his dead father; for example, ‘maggots in his eyes’, ‘stick through his finger ends’ and ‘his mouth is wide to let’. His descriptions are graphic, and almost too much information for the reader. The comments do not seem serious and seem to be making a joke out of death. These descriptions are horrible sickly images but between them are emotional and personal memories Betjeman has of his father. For example, the way he like ‘potatoes in their skin’ and the ‘rain washed Cornish air’. This shows us that although parts of the poem are comical and not seriously written, Betjeman has incorporated real emotion in his poems. His memories of his father are a very personal emotion to him; actual emotion.
This poem is probably one of the strongest examples of real emotion in Betjeman’s poetry because it is Betjeman’s own memories of his father.
At the end of the poem, Betjeman doubts his faith in God, ‘You ask me to believe You and I only see decay.’ Betjeman wonders why God took his father away; this is an emotion that many people can relate to. After loosing someone close to them, people often have reservations about God or the afterlife. Betjeman may be lacking in faith with God but I think he is just angry that his father died and maybe even for the fact that his father was deaf.
By looking at both poems it is obvious that Betjeman can write earnestly about love, religion and death and yet his poems still show real faith and sincere emotion. This is a clever device as Betjeman incorporates some humour in his poems and they still are deep and meaningful.
