Response to Poetry

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GCSE English

Response to Poetry

Aim: To Compare the representation of violence and alienation in Carol Ann Duffy’s “Education for Leisure” and Simon Armitage’s “Hitcher”

In the representation of Education for leisure and Hitcher the themes which are fore grounded in the poems are violence and alienation which occur a lot in both the poems. By reading the poems we find out that both poets are socially aware modern poets who are keen to explore issues in contemporary society.

In the Education for leisure Education for Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy the poem explores the mind of a disturbed, angry and upset person, who is planning murder. Reading the poem the reader does not know if the narrator is male or female. What we do know is that he or she has a powerful sense of his own importance, and a searing sense of being alienated that, no one else notices him.

The first sentence “Today I am going to kill something”, is a very strong opening. Usually the first sentences of poems are catchy and set a mood and then they culminate up into something. The speaker uses a high impact sentence which appeals strongly to feelings, making it feel surprisingly or shocking. This means the reader will want to carry on reading to see why the person would want to kill. The poem is written in first person. Duffy changes from thought to thought so that the reader may develop sympathy with the narrator and see why he wants to kill. Most people who are violent have often been mistreated, ignored in their life so they take it out on other people, animals and objects.

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The reasons for the speaker’s violent actions are because he has been lonely and mistreated in his life. The speaker shows this when he says to himself in the second line “I have had enough of being ignored”, so he decides to take out his anger on things that can’t fight back just like a bully. The speaker’s views and attitude to violence is that he doesn’t care when he kills, he does it because he is bored and has nothing else to do and he can just turn off and not feel guilty. The speaker likes the power and ...

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