In ‘Havisham’, the oxymoron is effective because it sets to atmosphere of anger right at the beginning. We straight away get an impression of a twisted confused and anxious woman who can’t think straight. The alliteration combined with the oxymoron; ‘beloved, ..bastard’ further emphasizes the bitterness because of how suttle and aggressive they are pronounced. This therefore shows a similarity with the techniques used in ‘The Laboratory’, as alliteration is used here for the same reason. However, as it isn’t combined with an oxymoron, it isn’t as effective but does emphasize the aggressive actions (‘mash’ and ‘moisten’) that show how tense she is to kill her victim. The sibilance in ‘On my first Sonne’ isn’t that effective because it is too smooth and effortless to bring out the snappy envy in the man. However, it does increase the pace which helps create tension to represent the envious feelings. In ‘Stealing; I think that the short sentence at the end is good because it can say so much about the character – it is ambiguous as well as snappy. The quote could refer to the speakers life as well as his victims, which tells us why he made such as heartless and resentful statement.
In the poems, there is also some distress shown. This is most evident in ‘Havisham’ and ‘On my first Sonne’, where they have clearly lost someone that they loved, which makes them grieve. In ‘stealing’ the speaker is distressed because they are bored – they are a ‘have-not’ unemployed scum that can’t rebuild a snowman. In ‘The Laboratory’, the woman is distressed as she grieves over the loss of her ex.
The way these emotions are portrayed are quite varied for each poem. In ‘Havisham’, her distressful state is conveyed through lots of disturbing activities. The most particular is her ‘cawing Noooo at the wall’. On the contrary, in ‘On my first Sonne’ the fathers distress is displayed through rhetorical questions and statements of uselessness.; ‘Will man lament the state he should envie?’ and ‘O, could loose all father now’ respectively. In ‘The Laboratory’, objabement is used to link the two idea of the beliefs of the couple and the reality of the situation together; ‘they believe
My tears flow’.
In ‘Stealing; the speakers distress is portrayed through their frustrated and pointless actions, that show their ‘bordom’. The latter is most effective in showing their isolated empty state by being in a sentence on its own and at the beginning of the stanza. This shows how isolated and empty the life of the speaker is hence their distress. On the contrary, both ‘Havisham’ and ‘On my first Sonne’ are affective in the same way of using onomatopoeia; The ‘O’ part at the start of line 5 in ‘On my first Sonne’ and ‘Nooooo’ in ‘Havisham’. They are both examples of how we behave when something really bad has happened to use, and therefore gets that distressed impression across. I think that ‘Havisham’ is more effective in this area because it says she is ‘cawing’ the sound. This gives us the impression that Havisham has been broken down into a small vulnerable animal, which is effective because I shows how she has lost all her humanity and sanity. In ‘The Laboratory’ through, I think that her distressful emotions are portrayed quite effectively because the line ‘my tears flow’ is a short phrase isolated on its own. This gets across to the reader the emphasize of the woman being on her own and because the word ‘flow’ rhymes with the word ‘know’ in a rhyming couplet, in enforces a smooth moving pace when it is read which would be interpreted as her tears actually flowing from her eyes from her face.
A difference between the emotions in the poems is the common opposites; ‘Havisham’ and ‘On my first Sonne’ show the emotion of love in the protagonists; in ‘Stealing’ the speaker hates the ‘haves’ (richer, fortunate people and in ‘The Laboratory’ the woman hate the ex. and his girlfriend. There is also a significant amount of jealousy in these 2 poems too.
In ‘Havisham’, her love is stated on its own at the end of stanza 3. This links with the beginning of stanza 4;
‘…loves
hate behind a white veil…’
This was done to link the two ideas that she still has some tenderness for him, but is ambiguous; the objambment suggests her love is hate or that hate belongs to love. In ‘On my first Sonne his love is expressed right at the beginning with both repetition and a rhyming couplet;
‘….and joy;
….thee lov’d boy,’
The repetition was used to really oppress the fathers love for him, and the rhyming couplet to concentrate this idea by linking the emphasis on these emotions together. It is also presented in a sonnet, which is a typical format for many love poems hence immediately tells us it is about love.
On the contrary, there is no love in the other two poems and the opposite is displayed in ‘Stealing’ with again the same technique used in ‘On my first Sonne’ to show the emotion of love; repetition:
‘…and booted him. Again. Again.’
This was used to show how jealous the speaker is of the more fortunate folk who made the snowman. It shows that they aren’t backing off from showing their hate towards life. The ‘snowman’ could also be considered a symbol of a happy family relationship that the speaker has ‘booted’ to destroy because he/she is jealous of them. In ‘The Laboratory’, Browning makes use of metaphors like ‘Let death be felt’ and alliteration ‘Brand, burn up ‘bite’ to emphasize very vigorous hate towards the intended victim. This conveys how much she wants her victim to be ruined. I think that this is the most effective at conveying her hate because these ideas are also tightly linked with a rhyming couplet;
‘….pain’
‘….remain’. these show how endured she wants the suffering to be, hence how spiteful the woman is.
‘Stealing’ also uses the poem format to portray the Protagonists State of emotion. Duffy uses free verse to show how topsy-turvy and confused the speaker is, but in my opinion it has no effect on the reader but makes the poem harder to read since the pace has no constancy.
By Charlie Macgilchrist
Of
St. Benedicts School Derby
