Compare how Attitudes to Life and People are Shown in “Stealing” and three other poems – two other pre 1914, and one Simon Armitage poem.
All four poems have a strong sense of isolation about them. They all have a disturbing message within, which is portrayed in different ways by the writers, and it’s as if they are all written to shock the reader.
In Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Stealing’, the poem begins with the use of alliteration, the words magnificence, midnight and mate show the person’s anger, and his power. The loneliness and isolation that the thief feels is seen when it goes to the extremes of stealing a snowman for company. The outcast is seen to take pleasure from other people’s pain when he says, ‘the thrill was knowing the children would cry.’ The thief is talking as though it destroys for the sake of it, and Carol Ann Duffy uses a lot of hard sounding words such as ‘booted’, ‘ripped’ and ‘rags’ to add emphasis to the thief’s feelings. Perhaps the most disturbing phrase in the poem is ‘I could eat myself’ which shows a sense of self destruction – possibly suicide.
