Show how Edwin Morgan's 'In the Snack Bar' gives an insight into a less pleasant side to life through its use of interesting language

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In the Snack Bar        

“In the Snack Bar,” by Edwin Morgan, is a poem which, through interesting use of language, gives the reader a degree of insight into the less pleasant side of life.  This darker side to life is depicted through the character of a disabled, blind and hunchbacked old man.  The reader is introduced to the old man firstly from the detached perspective of a spectator who is watching him struggle to his feet from a distance.  However, as the poem progresses, Morgan leads the reader to empathise with the man’s plight by illustrating - in great detail - his relentless struggle of endurance through life, despite finding the most simple, basic  human functions an unspeakable effort.   Through clever use of language the poet reveals the painstaking difficulties that the man has to negotiate because of his deformity and disabilities before going on to make a wider comment about humanity at large.

        The first stanza introduces the old man to the reader from the perspective of an outsider watching him in the snack bar.  We are told that “A cup capsizes along the formica…/A few heads turn in the crowded evening snack-bar/An old man is trying to get to his feet,” giving us the impression that the speaker’s head is also one of those which has turned at the disturbance and who is now staring at the old man struggle.  The speaker relates the difficulties that the man encounters in just trying to get to his feet, telling the reader that he “slowly…levers himself up” and that “his hands have no power.”  This imparts to the reader immediately the extent of the man’s weakness by highlighting that the most basic of human functions – simply standing up from a seated position – is of a huge effort for him.  The reader is then informed that he is “up as far as he can get,” suggesting that he cannot stand fully upright.  The meaning of this is made clear in the next line:  “The dismal hump/looming over him forces his head down.”  The word choice of “dismal” and “looming” lend an ominous presence to the man’s hunchback and serve to introduce the idea that this deformity imposes wretched limitations on him which affect the quality of his life.  This idea is further entrenched by the word “forces” which tells the reader that he is involuntarily cut off from the world and is lowered to a physically submissive position by being never able to raise his head and thus seeming as though he is forever bowing down to others.  

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        The speaker brings the reader a glimpse of some of the more unpleasant, bleaker aspects of human life by first offering a view of the man from a detached perspective:  “he stands in his stained beltless garberdine/like a monstrous animal caught in a tent/in some story.”  The comparison to an animal highlights the extent of his deformity by suggesting that he in some way seems inhuman and without an identity:  he is identified by the speaker and, the reader can assume, by the other spectators in the snack-bar, by his hunchbacked appearance alone.  The word “monstrous” further adds to this ...

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