How are people presented in Vultures and one other poem of your choice

In “Two Scavengers in a truck, two beautiful people in a Mercedes”, people are presented from two different sides of the society. It shows two garbage men and contrasts them with an elegant, rich couple in a Mercedes. It’s about two pairs of people meeting for a moment in a busy city at nine o’clock in the morning. They are strangers and never speak to each other. They are only near each other because they are waiting for the traffic lights to change. The first pair of people are two dustmen. They are finishing their working day and going back to the depot. They are hanging off the back of the dustbin lorry and looking down at a couple in a Mercedes sports car. These people in the Mercedes seem the very opposite of the dustbin men. They are starting their day and seem rich, successful and fashionable. The poem makes lots of contrasts between the two pair and it seems to criticise the society which makes the differences between people so large. When the poet’s describing the dustbin men, it is often negative, dirty and cheap. For instance, their jackets are plastic, they are grungy, and he calls them ‘scavengers’. We usually think of scavengers as animals that live off whatever others leave behind, like vultures. And in a way that’s what they are – they are paid to take away what others don’t want, but they do an important job and we couldn’t live without them. The poet describes the couple in the Mercedes in a very positive way. He wears a suit and her hair is nicely done, and their car shows just how rich they must be, but at the same time the poet also seems to criticise this couple. He says it’s like watching an ‘odourless TV’ advert, so they don’t look like real people and they sound too good to be true. The poet then shows us how two of the men are similar. They are the same age, wear sunglasses and have long hair. And of course they live in the same city – they should be equal. This idea is made very clear at the end. The four people are next to each other, but there is a ‘gulf’ between them - they are living in different worlds.

The language in ‘Vultures’ is very negative towards the people, and also has a strong influence on how the people are presented. There are a lot of pessimistic adjectives used to describe the opening lines of the poem, and also to present the vultures throughout the poem. For example in the first couple of  lines in the poem ‘greyness’ is used, which create the idea that it is a dull scene, but the contrast with the words ‘sunbreak’ give a more positive effect. The poem uses a similar technique to present the vultures, for every positive point about them; there is a different negative point presented. The metaphor, ‘bashed in head, a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross feathers’ creates a negative image of the vultures. Various words are use to create disgusting images of the birds. It says ‘they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse”. This is presented as an inhumane thing to do. The vultures are picking at the body of either a dead animal. After this the poet presents the juxtaposing idea of how the birds love each other. People are presented in comparison to the vultures using the example of the brutal Nazi Commandant at the Belsen concentration camp. The poem states how the commandant goes home ‘with the fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his hairy nostrils’. This emphasises the more negative side. The word ‘hairy’ compares the commandant to the vultures as it is a description which also applies to the vultures feathers. The poem also says how the commandant stops at the sweet shop to buy a chocolate for his child. The poet uses the phrase ‘tender offspring’ to refer to the child; the word tender suggests that there is a close, caring and loving relationship between the commandant and his child. Therefore this shows the more positive side to the poem. The use of the word offspring, which usually refers to the child of an animal, links people to the vultures in the poem. So the poem presents humans negatively, with an evil side, but also shows how these kinds of people also have a more tender side to them, just like the vultures. It compares people with animals such as vultures. Overall the words used are both negative and then follow a positive point.

‘Two Scavengers in a Truck, two Beautiful People in a Mercedes’ uses linguistic features to present people. In the first couple of lines, the colours yellow and red are used to describe the garbage men. These colours are bright and suggest brightness into their lives. The adjective used to describe the people in the Mercedes is elegant and this is repeated, which suggests the couple are boring as there are no other adjectives to describe them. This also emphasises on the word and shows that they are very posh and therefore quite snobby. This is ironic as you would expect the couple to have a better life whereas the garbage men are expected to have a boring and dull life. The way that the couple are dressed and appear is described using various phrase and adjective; ‘hip’, ‘three-piece linen suit’, ‘shoulder length blond hair & sunglasses’, ‘young blond woman’ and ‘casually coifed’. All of the previous suggest that the couple are superior to the garbage men. This is because they are modern and are living what can be described as The ‘American Dream’. The garbage men are described more negatively, the first one id referred to as having ‘grey iron hair’, ‘’hunched back’ and’ gargoyle Quasimodo’. The word ‘grey’ contrasts with the earlier colours but also suggests that he is quite dirty, the phrase ‘gargoyle Quasimodo’ implies that he is ugly and compares him to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, who was very caring and loving despite his appearance. The second of the garbage men is described the same as the Mercedes driver, however you know that they are nothing alike from other references and also because the two men are collectively described as ‘scavengers’ and ‘grungy’. The use of the word ‘scavengers’ suggest the two men are poor and the fact that they are garbage men emphasises this further. Overall it is shown that the garbage men are dirtier but have a more interesting life, whereas the elegant couple are shown to have the more boring life. One of the unusual things about the poem is that it doesn’t have clear sentences, full stops or commas. Even the lines don’t all start in the same place – some lines start on the left, some on the right and some in the middle. This is done on purpose. The four people are together for a few seconds and the poet quickly notes down some differences. It also means that when you read it, you stop at different places, and this might make you think about different ideas in the poem, and what you think of modern life. 

The two poems present people in different way using different adjectives and linguistic features. They also show that people are not in anyway perfect in their actions and appearances. Therefore by these two poems we are shown that people can be both evil and kind and also you cannot judge a book by its cover.  The two garbage men are referred to as scavengers with a low status, whilst the young people are described as elegant. The poem is set in what can be described as a ‘snapshot’ in time, which is when they are waiting at the traffic lights. Although the two groups of people are presented completely differently in terms of status they sill exist in the same place at the same time which is what brings them together.