Exploring the ways in how the author explores the theme of work in Monologue.
Monologue by the late New Zealand poet Hone Tuwhare was inspired by an elderly Scotsman that he used to work with. This poem is a very thought provoking and contradictive poem about the world of work in this workplace. I believe the author is trying to make us picture this workplace in great detail and how it affects us and all around us. The persona in the poem is not the author but the elderly Scotsman he used to work with.
The poet uses enjambment through out the poem to convey his message of the precariousness of the workforce. The enjambment also causes the pace to be smooth and continuous. The structure of the poem is free verse and very irregular.
In the first stanza the persona wants to have the opportunity to escape and to have freedom in the workplace as he likes “working near a door”. In the second verse he sets the coldness of the workplace by using the metaphor “Here the cold creeps under the big doors”. This gives out an effect of bitterness and harshness as people work in the cold. We are given an industrial image when the poet uses the phrase “a lorry load of steel” this means the workplace could be using steel to make it into other products.