Compare the ways in which the poets present people in Night of the Scorpion and Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful people in a Mercedes.

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Pavan Aulak                Mrs Gerber

10AV                English

Compare the ways in which the poets present people in Night of the Scorpion and Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful people in a Mercedes.

In Night of the Scorpion, the title is in some ways deceptive. It leads us to believe we are in for a frightening and dramatic tale with a scorpion taking centre stage. In fact, the poem is not about the scorpion at all, but about the reactions of different people to its sting. The poem starts off in the first person when Ezekiel describes an event that really happened. However, he does not give his own feelings or reactions: we realise he is merely the narrator even though it is his mother who is being stung. Most of the poem is in the third person, as Ezekiel reports on what other people do and say.

He does not portray the scorpion as a villain: it was driven to shelter 'beneath a sack of rice' after ten hours of rain and that it was only protecting itself from the rain. It probably stung the mother instinctively as a warning to her when she approached its hiding place, rather than harming her on purpose. Having delivered the sting and scared off by the people indoors, 'he risked the rain again'.

The title of Two Scavengers shows us straight away that the poem will be about the contrasts between two pairs of people. 'Scavengers' is an offensive term for the garbage men because it suggests that they live off the rubbish of others - a scavenger beetle comes in mind, a creature that lives off rotting flesh. However, 'Beautiful People' is a compliment. So, right from the start, we feel the garbage men are at a disadvantage. This message is seen as ironic when Ferlinghetti, describes the garbage men are 'looking down' into the Mercedes. This is clearly because the garbage truck is taller than the car, but is there a sarcastic element to this, which could be a way to show the political message of the reality of society. This plays on your personal opinion that the reader might have expected the rich couple to 'look down on' the dustbin men, not the other way round.

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However, the villagers in Night of the Scorpion are more superstitious and link the scorpion to 'the Evil One’. They claim that the poison will help in many ways. For example, by burning away the sins of the woman's former life - 'her previous birth' and ease her life after this one 'her next birth'. Perhaps this is their way of making sense of the event: if good comes out of it, it is easier to bear. Ezekiel uses a simile, comparing the villagers to 'swarms of flies'. It is striking that he uses an insect image to describe the ...

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