How are attitude towards other presented in 4 poems?
The attitudes of one writer differs from the attitude of another writer, there are various reason for this but the main one would be the fact that each person has had a unique experience of life. The poets also use different attitudes and devices that enforce the attitudes to drive home the message that they are trying to convey.
The opening line of the poem ‘Havisham’, starts with the oxymoron “Beloved sweetheart Bastard”, which could suggest that the character is confused. It makes us think that she loves the character deep down , hence the words beloved sweetheart , yet hates the man for what he has done , hence the word bastard. She obviously dislikes the man who jilted her but as the poem develops we see that she hates all men as a result of an action of one man.
‘The Man He Killed’ doesn’t only shows the attitude of the character towards others but it could also be taken that it shows the attitude of the writer as well. The poem is about a soldier, is 20 lines long and not once does it mention a name of either the character or the victim that the character speaks about. This could portray that to the writer all soldiers or the people in the armed forced are like subjects to the writer and not individual people, this could be because they all almost live a life of equilibrium and follow orders like robots, they don’t think or feel for themselves not they act on their own thought, they simply follow commands. This could be why all the men and women in armed forces to the writer are ‘He’s’ or ‘She’s’. On the other hand the use of ‘He’ instead of a name could highlight that it’s not important who the person is, how he acts/feels is more important. The term ‘He’ could also be used to describe that this isn’t just one person that’s acting in this was in this situation but it’s just in the human nature to act like this, in this case, a name doesn’t hold any value, it can be YOU yourself for that matter.
