The Aberfan people are very scared now; they pray that nothing like this is going to happen again to the village. The families and friends of Aberfan are metaphorically emotionally scarred for life. The Aberfan disaster has literally scarred the landscape. There are no mountains left which means that there is a big gash in the beautiful Welsh countryside.
The poet says that no matter what the people of Aberfan do; paint and powder it the memories of the disaster will never disappear. There’s a big black hole in the community of Aberfan now. There’s a special bond between mother and child something that can never be forgotten, but it has been destroyed in the disaster. The people of Aberfan are now worried that this thing will happen again and shatter many more lives. Children who survived the disaster can’t carry on a normal life no more as they are scared of any noises they think that the disaster is repeating on them again.
The poet says that the family of the dead are clutching blankets as some form of comfort for there lost. The poet uses onomatopoeia to describe the black river by using the word sludge to emphasise the texture of the river. The poet use the word broken to describe all the thing that had been damaged in the school as in children and doll., There is nothing left except adults, a complete generation has been wiped out. Solemn now, no fun at all in Aberfan, everyone is upset no games or laughter everything quiet like an old ghost town which no one ever visits.
The survivors were looked at jealously by grieving family’s, thinking why did it have to by me child??
For the last verse of the poem, the poet uses a reflective tone by saying that its all quiet in Aberfan now, the author uses the reflective tone to sum up everything that has happened recently in Aberfan. The church bells are now all silent in Aberfan when the funerals are going on, no weddings just funerals. Very sad atmosphere in Aberfan.
The family are starting to feel guilty about what happened, why did it happen to us? Why not them? They feel guilty as parents thinking to them selves that they had responsibility for their children. But the family’s deep down know that they could have done nothing to change what had happened. If they were going to blame anyone, then they should blame the coal company.
Suicide on Pentwyn Bridge
The man who committed suicide on Pentwyn Bridge was not on as big as scale as the Aberfan disaster but it also had the same effects on the local community, although he was not known to many people. The man jumped of Pentwyn Bridge, two bridges away from the local hospital. The slow motion effect of him jumping off the bridge, Is captured by the poet making us think that the fall is very long and drawn out.
The poet use the words falling in the brown dirty water which makes you think that it is over a dirty river but it is not, it is over a fast running motorway. The man can see through his wife’s eyes, he can see what has happened to him. When the man gets to the hospital you can see the emotions on his wife’s face, sobbing her eyes out with tears.
The hospital is full of things that are white, the white makes you think of peace, clean, innocent when reading the poem. The poet describes the way that time passes, week after week, month after month. The man’s wife works in the local supermarket, it is much localised so people come in asking her how her husband is. The people in the area are always informed of new occurrences. The people in the supermarket would quietly ask about her husband as they did not like to interfere.
The poet concentrated on only using direct speech to show the readers a very personal approach to the situation. The corridors are described as very bleak no posters or painting or flowers. The doctors had no words to say to his wife, no sympathy for her. A lot of small talk and social skills that were not very good. The wife uses supermarket talk by saying ‘doctors do not live in the same world as me’ she is trying to say that they do not understand what she is going through.
The man spent a lot of time to die; this meant that his wife suffered for a very long time.
Christmas is supposed to as a warm time of year but that has been
shatterring for the people that were close to the man that died.
The man who committed suicide survived all the way through the winter until he dies in the spring. He took a very long time to die, which meant that the death was very distressing for the families.
The relationship between both of the poems is very strong; the scene is very quiet in both poems, as two different tragedies have affected two different communities. The poets of both poems use a lot of colours in the poems to describe different feelings such as white for the description of the hospital.
