Laura Bayon 12/1
How does Betjeman convey his attitude towards Slough?
In his poem ‘Slough’ Betjeman uses a number of ways to put across his views. The title itself suggests he feels that ‘Slough’ is an appropriate title, that a poem on the place deserves no better or imaginative title than just its name because the place is dull and unimaginative also, or that ‘Slough’ says it all already. The first line of the first stanza means you immediately know what he thinks, his opinion being straight to the point, asking ‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough’ which is a good use of juxtaposition as bombs are never seen as friendly, but in this case they would be if they bombed Slough as they would be doing him a favour. Asking for bombs to fall on Slough is an outrageous, extreme demand which he repeats in the second stanza and in the final stanza to reinforce his plea, and he also uses other extreme terms such as the people have Slough having ‘tasted Hell’ which shows clear dislike. He is very flippant about asking the bombs to blow Slough ‘to smithereens’ as if he wants no part of it left and it’s a reasonable demand.
Betjeman’s phrases such as ‘It’s not their fault that they are mad’, ‘they do not know’ and ‘they often go’ makes it sound like he feels the people of Slough are alienated and are very different to himself, as if they were another species altogether, calling them ‘they’, disassociating them from himself, and being patronising about their lives. He also conveys his attitude of Slough by describing what he thinks of the people that live there such as the ‘man with the double chin’ who will ‘always cheat and always win’ and who he also refers to as a ‘stinking cad’. He is not complimentary about the people of Slough, like the wives with ‘peroxide hair’ and the men who sit in ‘bogus Tudor bars’ with nothing better to do. His descriptions of the people help explain why he dislikes Slough, and he is saying that it may be the people who live there that help to make it a bad place, so this is a view he has of Slough. But he also pities the people , saying ‘it’s not their fault’ so I think he is unsure himself whether it is the people making Slough a terrible place, or Slough making the people terrible. Either way, he subtly ridicules the people of Slough and their ways of life as he feels the wives sit and paint their nails’ and the men talk of cars and’belch’.