Compare and contrast the way John Clare and Coventry Patmoore portray their protests in their poems 'A London Fete' and 'The Badger'

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Compare and contrast how John Clare and Coventry Patmoore portray their protests in their poems, ’A London Fete’ and ‘The Badger’

‘A London Fete’ by Coventry Patmoore paints a vivid picture of a public hanging in the middle of London. ‘The Badger’ by John Clare describes a badger being captured, baited and eventually killed. Both of the poets portray these events in a highly negative way showing that they are against these events continuing. However, ‘A London Fete’ was written years after public hangings had been banned while ‘The Badger’ was written at a time when Badger baiting was still common public entertainment. Both poets use critical descriptions of the people involved in the events in order to convey their protest as well as creating sympathy for the victims of the poems and creating unpleasant atmosphere/s within the poems.

        In both poems, negative descriptions of the people involved are used to convey a negative attitude to the events themselves. For example in ‘The Badger’ we read how the men who take part in the baiting of the badger “laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs”. This makes them seem, in contrast to the “scampering” frightened hogs, like callous, mean creatures. In ‘The London Fete’, when describing the crowd looking at the man being hanged Clare writes, “Thousands of eyeballs, lit with hell”. This makes the crowd seem inhumane and evil in the same way that ‘The Badger’ makes people seem callous and mean. However, the fact that Patmoore uses hellish connotations is perhaps more shocking as he is actually comparing humans to demonic creatures. This could be because public hangings had already been banned when Patmoore wrote his poem, therefore he was less worried about condemning people who used to attend. Clare uses milder descriptions, simply comparing humans to ‘bullies’ as opposed to demons. However, another interpretation of the fact that Patmoore uses hellish descriptions of the people at the hanging is that pre-1914 there was a strong awareness and fear of witchcraft and satanic rituals. Therefore, Patmoore, knowing how much society at the time disliked witchcraft, took advantage of this by giving these connotations to the people he was describing. This, to anyone at the time reading the poem gave an particularly negative image of the people at the hanging, and of the event itself.

        Another technique which the poets use to portray the events in a negative way is the use of special descriptions of the victims of the events designed to create sympathy for them. In ‘The Badger’, this is done by giving the badger human-like attributes and thereby personifying him. For example, Clare writes “the badger grins”, which, as grinning is a human reaction to things, personifies the animal. As the reader after this point will treat the badger as a person, what is being done to him becomes even more outrageous. However, another interpretation of Clare’s use of the quote “the badger grins” is to make the badger seem happy despite what is being done to him this lends his character a sense of naivety, again creating sympathy for him. In ‘A London Fete’, Patmoore uses the same technique, the other way around. Although the victim is a human, Patmoore describes him in an animalistic way. For example we read that his “roar” when being hung was “confused and affrighting”. As roaring is something animals do, the poet implies that the person being hanged is being treated as an animal with minimal respect which is clearly unjust. The phrase, “confused and affrighting” also gives the image of a confused, frightened animal with no means of defending itself thereby evoking more sympathy and again making the event seem dreadfully unjust.

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Another technique used by both of the poets to portray their protests is the creation of a specific atmosphere. In “A London Fete”, Patmoore creates, right from the first line a threatening atmosphere with stark language and the repetition of the word “shock” which effectively describes the building of the gallows. Tension builds quickly with allusions to Newgate and to the time, which would have resounded with readers of this era.  A hectic and unpleasant atmosphere is then created with phrases such as “The chaos of noises” and with his description of the crowd: “These, half-crushes, with frantic faces”. Both ...

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