Critical discussion of at least three poems Essay

Comp atomic number 18 the ways in which the poets write about unhappiness and wo(e). In your response you must include a critical discussion of at least three poems. Throughout this comparative analysis, I w bad discuss the various ways in which the poets use lexis, mental imagery and structure to convey the popular opinion and themes within the text. I have chosen Lizzie, Six and shaft Stars by Carol Ann Duffy and Requiem for the Croppies by Seamus Heaney. The poems are every(prenominal) linked with miserable by the custody of an oppressive force.Lizzie by her abuser, the Jewish heroine by the Nazis and the Irish by the English. The poems offer vivid and undivided style to describe mutual suffe aura within varied circumstances. The titles of for each one poem are intended to capture the readers attention from the start. Lizzie, Six, is dictated out as such to show the youth of the character of Lizzie. Not nevertheless in her name being abbreviated in a new-made manner, alone the placement of the comma slows the reader down, forcing them to contemplate the purity of a pip-squeak that age.She is able to establish an immediate ace of dread. In guess Stars, Duffy provides us with an ambiguous beginning. Stars is representative of the Star of David and Shooting in the literal sense of the stars being shot. Alternatively, Duffy may have been using the title metaphorically as a shooting star, representative of fleeting life for the Jewish people by dint ofout the Nazi regime. The alliteration in Shooting Stars, is in like manner a mind verse root for Saal-Schutz, the Nazi SS Army.In Requiem for the Croppies, Requiem defined as a Mass for the repose of the souls of the dead is intended to offer peace to the thousands that died at the hands of the English and those that died being the Croppies, the Irish men defending their land who cut their hair into a cropped fashion as a sign of rebellion. It is a question of praise and thanks and a wish for restfulness for those men whose lives were interpreted in the uprising of 1798. Samir Raheem describes it as a poem that romantically commemorates the Irish rebels. (Rahim, Telegraph, 2013). The word Croppies is also a rhyme for poppies, a symbol of retrospect.The form and structure is indicative to the main themes of each poem and as a further notion the suffering the characters, cultures or countrymen have endured. Representative of this is in Lizzie, 6, Duffy lays out the poem in a series of five stanzas with a call and response from the abuser and the ill-treat autobiography, typical in nature of a nursery rhyme and resonant particularly to the story Little Red Riding Hood. Critic Stan metalworker describes Lizzie, Six as a plangent, Lorcaesque song. Barry Wood stated that Duffy knew Lorcas poetry or at least drew on similar traditions of favorite childs songs and rhymes (Wood, Tusitala. org. uk, 2007).The structure is repetitive and creates a feeling of tension. The repeti tion is also solid in the nature of the prolonged abuse, loss of innocence and suffering Lizzie is subjected to. The abuser also remains unidentified as it would be too uncomfortable for the reader to relate to the suffering the abuser inflicts (Morgan, Classnotes, 2015). In Shooting Stars, Duffy keeps the four-spot line stanzas to create a similar notion of repetition of abuse and more likely to emphasize the routine and the standard, desensitised, rhythmic executions carried out by Nazi soldiers.Shooting Stars is written as a first person narrative and similarly to Lizzies abuser, her character is unidentified. This however, is to ensure the reader grasps the point that so more other Jews died name littlely during this period of persecution, highlighting the suffering. Heaney in Requiem takes a completely different approach in the structure of the poem and instead lays it out in the form of a sonnet. This is a mark of respect and love for the Irishmen who suffered and a juxtapo sition to the ill respect shown by their oppressors. Written from the 3rd person narrative from the perspective of the Irish Rebels.Each line has roughly 10 or 11 syllables to it or just over, dictating the pace and the solemn, valiant story telling sentiment of the poem, an element similar to that of Lizzie. Six. Lizzie, Six uses dark and negative lexis throughout to increase the feeling of the suffering inflicted and the dialogue between the characters is disturbing. The doubling of the words moon about, palm, love, wood and dark in lines 2 and 3 of each stanza are offered primarily in the view of the innocence of a child, i. e. In literature, the moon is commonaltyly linked to imagination and handle to that of freedom etc.Secondly the words are manipulated by the adult abuser, effectively stripping the original tie-in of the word and replacing it with a horrific alternative showing the intention of stimulated abuse. Wood says that Duffy presents a poignant example of broken listening, of in this case the adult listener refusing to hear or misinterpreting what is heard and of the child destroyed by being unheard and ignored (B Wood, 2006). It also represents consistent and turn abuse as the words start with a lighter, childlike tone moon, fields and literally end with dark.The use of language in Lizzie, Six is vulgar, particularly towards the end of the poem Duffy uses this to show how the level of abuse and suffering worsens throughout the poem and over time and transitions from mental to sensible suffering. She shows this in the penultimate stanza when the abuser says Ill give you wood, when your bottoms bare. Wood is a disturbing metaphor and the literal intention the abuser becomes sheer here. The abuser asks in stanza five Where are you hiding? Duffy uses this to allow the reader to see the abuser demonstrating his menacing mental control over Lizzie as she is helpless to hide from him.In the sixth stanza, the abuser asks Why are you crying ? a physical display of an emotional response. (Morgan, Classnotes, 2015). Duffy shows a similar representation of the emotional and physical realms of suffering in Shooting Stars. I heard the click. Not yet. A trick The Nazi soldier at the time of the speakers execution uses excessive cruelty and mental torture in toying with his victim and the short disapprobations at the end of the line create tension and a sense of the real experience of the woman and the power wielded by the soldier (MissGrant, 2015).Duffy demonstrates physical anguish in the third stanza at the fear of rape from the Nazis My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Duffys word choice here is extreme but emphasizes the sheer little terror that a woman would go through in this situation. The gape is representative of a screaming mouth (MissGrant, 2015) and is letteredly inversed as gagged rape. The effect it has is it to forked the meaning and subsequently intensify the horror of the suffering she endured in this situation.Heaney represents the emotional suffering in the form of their love of the country, not necessarily the Irishmen individually but as a whole, due to the oppression from the English we moved quick and sudden in our own country. Heaney demonstrates the resentment of the Irish in this sentence and the priest lay behind ditches with the tramp Heaney juxtaposes the holiest man with the lowliest man, neither had any advantage over the other when it came to slaughter from their oppressors.The personification Heaney offers upon the Irish defeat on Vinegar Hill The Hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave Provokes the emotional and physical in the form of slight embarrassment at their being ill equipped to deter the English attack shaking scythes at cannon but also the physicality or their blood staining the green of the fields to red. The first and last line include the imagery of barley, a symbol for revolution and independence (Morgan, Classnotes, 2015).Heaney uses Irony from the barley that the Irish rebels carried in their pockets for food, was in point the very same that enabled the barley to grow up out of the grave fertilized by the blood of Irish souls. Critic Paul Hurt says that the first line The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley and the last line And in August the barley grew up out of the grave are contrived. They belong to the world of self-consciously significant details which are routine in many war films, in films of all kinds (Paul Hurt, 2015).But Critic Blake Morrison said that Seamus Heaney is that rare thing, a poet rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with the common reader and as a common reader, Im rather inclined to appreciate the majestic quality and symbolic representation of the re-birth of an army ready to fight and again. All three poems have a common feature with the echoed sadness and ill treatment and respect obligate from their oppressors with cud and shallow graves in Shooting Stars and R equiem they buried us without shroud or coffin and between the gaps of corpses I could see a child.And in Lizzie, Six, the abusers final statement Ill give you the dark and I do not care. The sentence and grammar structure in Lizzie, Six, is rigid and unchanging. The first line of each stanza is a question from the abuser, the second a response from the ab utilize and in the third and fourth lies a unhallowed manipulation of Lizzies answer Wood says The childs fear is answered only by a distorted or distorting echo from the adult world which, if less brutal and punitive than the world of Lizzie, Six, is equally isolating and disquieting. (B Wood, 2006) Possibly Duffy used this sentence structure to emphasise the unrelenting suffering in the emotional, and physical that Lizzie faces. In Shooting Stars, Duffy takes an alternative approach and to represent the last thoughts of a dying woman offers a certain level of enjambment within the text. The punctuation mark is free in that Reb ecca Rachel Ruth Aaron Emmanuel David are listed without breath to exaggerate the extent of the nameless people that have suffered. This is also a juxtaposition.This continues later in the poem with Sara Ezra Duffy has done this to show the list could go on and on without pause. Almost as if those that have suffered spring to mind too easily for the sheer flake of victims. Duffy uses repetition in the use of the word Remember. A resounding theme of the poem is to remember the suffering of an entire race and to relate this lessons of history to forward-looking day struggles. Duffy uses Anaphora in the fifth stanza to reiterate this theme. After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.After the terrible moans a male child washes his uniform. After the history lesson children run to their toys. Tea on the lawn refers to how normal life can resume so quickly after horrific events have taken place and can be forgotten as easily as a boy washes his uniform symbolic of the clean sing of the Jewish race (MissGrant, 2015). Heaney uses enjambment to slow the pace. It is used to represent the Irish Rebels speed of movement A people, hardly marching on the hike-, common folk, pacing themselves and climbing a hill, belike wounded, weary and hungry.Enjambment is used where the sonnet breaks form and introducing their demise Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave. Heaney uses this sentence structure to slow the reader and to emphasise the free fall of the rebels and their devastation emotionally and physically. It adds a dramatic and magnificent tone to their sacrifice. In a similar sub-theme to Shooting Stars, remembrance is also a theme in Requiem, highlighted throughout the poem by Heaneys word choice. Sound, sight, touch and sensation feature regularly in Shooting stars to evoke emotion.Straight away we are greeted with silence from the Dead Jew After I no longer speak a tradition of remembrance. We have a glimpse into her life that she was married, Du ffy displays this with the wedding ring, the dear that caused the sensation of urine trickling down her legs a physical display of an emotional response. And the brutal and callous touch of the soldiers to salvage what they see as the only valuable part of her when they break her finger to retrieve her wedding ring. Duffy uses the element of Marriage to re-inforce human emotion as a juxtaposition against the desensitised Nazis.Duffy also uses onomatopoeia in the word click to highlight the mental torture the soldier imposes on the Jewish prisoner. Assonance and rhyming are used continuously through Requiem to promote the feeling of a steady struggle. kitchens and stricking, sudden and country in the opening lines. camp, tramp, hike and pike are rhymes used every other line. Heaney does this to re-inforce the military tone of the poem, introducing a steady drumming for the rebels to march in time to.Heaney breaks the rhyme momentarily to create a sense of doom. He shows this in the final conclave. Heaney returns immediately to the rhyme to emphasise the re-birth of the soldiers and the importance of the remembrance for the those who suffered so they could live. Duffy uses a similar technique in Shooting Stars in opened the ragged gape of fear to re-inforce horror of the statement. She also uses alliteration in Rebecca Rachel Ruth and uses traditional Jewish names to heighten the gross(a) list of those who suffered.In Lizzie, Six, Duffy uses consonance rather than assonance and alliteration, closely implied to Anaphora to accentuate the nervous disposition of the reader What, Where, What, Where, Why at the beginning of each stanza and consonance in Im afraid of the dark. Ill give you the dark and I do not care similar to the techniques used in Shooting Stars in the first line uses consonance and an imperfect pararhyme speak and break in the first line. an All three poems have a common theme of rhyme, but the intention is different.Lizzie, Six and Requiem show tail rhyme and holorime both in an effort to make the poem memorable, but Duffy uses this in Lizzie, Six to exaggerate the loss of innocence of a child. Rhyming the poem in a simplistic child-like manner emphasises the haunting suffering. Whereas Heaney uses this technique to signify the remembrance theme of the poem, taking the literal of making the poem memorable and easy to read. All three poems have a common connection to the suffering imposed from an oppressor. For Lizzie, Six, Lizzie is suffering at the hands of her abuser.For Shooting Stars, the Jewish women and the Jewish race are suffering from the oppression of the Nazis and for Requiem for the Croppies, the Irishmen suffering for the loss of their land to the English. Shooting Stars and Requiem have a sub-theme of remembrance and Lizzie Six, the loss of innocence. Though loss of innocence can be found in Shooting Stars and Requiem, their sufferance is preponderantly for a race, and land rather than innocence. Regular asso nance and consonance are used throughout all three poems, but to different ends, similarly with intentional use of rhyming.The poems vividly highlight suffering throughout, with careful word choice, simplistic yet vulgar in Lizzie, Six to make the suffering more haunting, macabre and factual in Shooting Stars to exaggerate the horror of the suffering and militant and simple to aid the remembrance of the those who suffered in Requiem for the Croppies.ReferencesGardiner, M. (2015). Summaries of selected poetry by Seamus Heaney (Higher rail Certificate 1998). online Files. puzzling. org. Available at https//files. puzzling. org/wayback/hsc/heaney Accessed 17 Nov. 2015. Grant, M. (2015). online View. officeapps. live. com. Available at https//view. officeapps. live. com/op/view. aspx? src=http%3A%2F%2Fmissgrantenglish. wikispaces. com%2Ffile%2Fview%2FRevision%2BPack. docx Accessed 18 Nov. 2015. Hurt, P. (2015). Paul Hurt on Seamus Heaneys The Grauballe Man and other poems. online Link agenet. com. Available at http//www. linkagenet. com/reviews/heaneypoemcriticism. htmrequiem Accessed 18 Nov. 2015. McMahon, D. (2013).A quick reading of Seamus Heaneys Requiem for the Croppies. online pulpteacher. Available at https//pulpteacher. wordpress. com/2013/03/13/a-quick-reading-of-seamus-heaneys-requiem-for-the-croppies/ Accessed 17 Nov. 2015.