Comparing the poems, Salome, Hitcher, On My First Sonne and The Man He Killed.

The poem "Hitcher" has a character that expresses violence in a completely different manner. The poem is a monologue where the speaker casually admits to possibly murdering an innocent hitchhiker. The speaker tells us that he has been taking time off work - faking illness and not answering his phone. Being threatened with the sack, he goes in to work again and gets a lift to his hired car. As he drives out of Leeds, he picks up a hitchhiker who is travelling light and has no set destination. Some little way later he attacks his passenger, and throws him out of the still-moving car. The last he sees of the hiker, he is "bouncing off the kerb, then disappearing down the verge" - we do not know if he is dead or just badly injured. The driver does not appear to care.

Simon Armitage uses the technique of writing in first person and colloquial speaking. He writes about violence in a very relaxed manner just as the person would have thought "without a care in the world".

On My First Sonne is about a Father grieving for the death of his first Son. He believes he has sinned and that his sin is that he loved his Son too much. This menacing in a way as it is a confusing or immoral as it is strange too think a man could believe his Son died because he loved him too much.

In the poem Salome, it appears that Salome has become a serial remover of heads. She tells us that she had "done it before" (presumably in the case of John the Baptist) and that she would "doubtless...do it again". Having woken up with a severed head on the pillow, she cannot even remember the owner's name. So she calls for the maid has breakfast, and decides to "clean up" her life. As part of this regime, she decides to get rid of her lover - and the poem ends as she pulls back the sheets "sticky" with blood, to find "his head on a platter". Ms. Duffy introduces all sorts of contemporary details into the poem, such as toast and butter and cigarettes, as well as modern attitudes, like a decision to get fit and "turf out" a lover. We also find very contemporary slang - like "booze", "fags" and "ain't life a bitch".

Both the poems Salome and Hitcher have very disturbing imagery and seem to be amoral. Both the acts of violence are menacing and callous and neither concludes the actions of what happened. The differences are that Salome had pre meditated the act whereas the man in the Hitcher committed the act on the spot. Both of the poems are confusing and surreal as Hitcher is about the idea of jealousness compared to Salome, which is about the idea of hatred.

Both The Man He Killed and On My First Sonne are menacing in a different way. They both are about guilt and empathy. The Man he Killed is a dramatic monologue of a man confessing to murder whereas On My First Sonne is an elegy to his Son. In On My First Sonne the man is desperate for the reason why his son was taken and feels pain and rage. When compared to The Man He Killed, he is looking for the reason for why he shot him but feels neither pain nor anger.

All the poems show menacing and threatening ideas but are not all based around violence. The poets use technical methods to hide a story. They do this by using repetition of words, hesitations and enjambment.