Compare how poets use language to present feelings in the Manhunt and one other poem (Nettles)

Structures the essay into paragraphs, has an introduction and a conclusion, and uses transition words

The final stanza revolves around the nettles retorting to the father’s attacks. In the first line, the father is shown to give the nettles a funeral. This shows the father ending the troubles caused by the nettles. With effective choice of words, the poet describes how the ’sun’ and ‘rain’, representative of nature and its power, finally help the nettles grow. The word ‘recruits’ shows the enemy army was returning and regrouping. Furthermore, the word ‘tall’ depicts the nettles being stronger and healthier than before and their readiness for the battle. The final line states that the son would be hurt by the nettles soon and again. While problems won’t wane with time, despite all of the father’s efforts, the son will have to find a way to learn to adapt to the renewed struggles in his life.

Loving relationships are presented in the two poems. The wife in 'The Manhunt' helps her husband to come close to her again, whilst the father in 'Nettles' unhappily realises he can't protect his son from life, no matter how hard he tries. Both poems use the same semantic fields. War and pain are expressed in both poems. The words ‘regiment’, ‘recruits’, ‘bullet’, and ‘parachute silk’, all relate to war whilst the words ‘tender’, ‘blisters’, ‘blown...jaw’, ‘fractured...shoulder blade’ and ‘broken ribs’ all relate to pain. In both poems the relationships are both shown as being damaged by a war, whether it be emotional or physical, which has destroyed the two relationships. In Conclusion, both poems present vulnerability in relationships, not only is the person in pain vulnerable but the partner is also, due to an uncontrollable desire to help. This has been shown through their partners account of pain and through war

Loss is initially explored in the first stanzas of ‘Conscript’ by FA Horn and ‘The Photograph’ by Peter Kocan. Contrasting initial subjects are explored as ‘Conscript’ tells the story of a man enlisted in war, which furthermore teaches him life skills in order for him to advance into a true man, exploring the loss of his identity. This differs to ‘The Photograph’ which explores the loss of a man who was sent to war and tragically killed before experiencing the joys of life. Horn expresses in ‘Conscript’ that metaphorically ‘he’s twice the man he was – a puny chap’ foreshadowing his development into being the man that was sought of him, leaving behind or losing his prior identity. Contrasting to this, Kocan reveals in ‘The Photograph’ loss in a dissimilar way, in which the subject of the poem is identified to have died, with the earlier stanzas of this poem communicating that Jim ‘went to War…’; furthermore stating that he ‘didn’t come back’ with the poet using emotive

Looking at the different structures and forms used in both poems, they contrast the difference between one speaker being confused, and not knowing what’s happening, to a very loosely structured ballad.

Lovelace’s diction helps to develop the theme that war requires a passionate commitment from soldiers and can be as consuming as a relationship with a person the poet uses many dictions throughout the poem that suggests going to war such as ‘chaste, mistress, embrace, inconstancy, adore and love’. Likewise, Tennyson’s diction helps to develop the themes that war places soldiers under extreme stress, and soldiers can fight bravely and honorably even if the result of the battle is unsuccessful. In contrast, the word choices in Owen’s poem supports the theme that war is destructive, bitter, and violent, not the romantic efforts praised by those outside of it. Diction that has a strong impact on Borden’s poem is ‘satin, ermine, chic’, or words that have strong negative connotations such as ‘obscene, putrid, monstrous’. Equally important, The Diction in Borden’s poem support the theme that war is indifferent to human life. Words that display The Diction in “The Song of the Mud” are ‘cursed, sludge, haunting, trudge, blood-shod’. Whereas The tone of Lovelace’s poem is romantic and slightly playful along with Tennyson tone, which establishes a serious and respectful tone that also acknowledges the stress and confusion of war. Unlike the tone in the first set of poems, A great example of irony in Owen’s poem is “Ecstasy” (line 9), which usually associated with positive feelings of joy or intense

The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.

During times of war, it is inevitable for loss to be experienced by all. In the poems “The Black Rat” and “The Photograph” written by Iris Clayton and Peter Kocan respectively, the idea of loss is explored through an omniscient narrator recalling a soldier’s involvement in warfare. While Clayton writes of a soldier’s abrupt loss of hope and how this experience negatively affects his life, Kocan explores how the loss of a loved one affects a family sixty years later. While both poems incorporate similar techniques in imagery and narration, the time setting for each poem is different as “The Black Rat” is set in Tobruk, Libya during World War 2 and “The Photograph” is set during World War 1.

Simon Armitage repeats the phrase ‘only then’ five times throughout ‘The Manhunt’. This emphasises how difficult it is to recover a relationship when your partner has changed – in this instance, due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He also juxtaposes the phrases ‘passionate nights’ and ‘intimate days’. This suggests that the love was not just physical but also emotional. The main technique Armitage uses, however, is imagery to suggest fragility. His collarbone is described as ‘damaged, porcelain’ and his punctured lung as ‘parachute silk’ – the ‘silk’ also suggesting luxury, and the ‘parachute’ representative of how he was injured in the army. In the tenth stanza, the bullet in his chest is described as a

Para-rhymes, in Owen’s poetry, generate a sense of incompleteness while creating a pessimistic, gloomy effect to give an impression of sombreness. Strong rhyming schemes are often interrupted unexpectedly with a para-rhyme to incorporate doubt to every aspect of this Great War. Who are the real villains and why are hundreds of thousands of lives being wasted in a war with no meaning? In ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, the consistent sonnet rhyming scheme is disturbed by a half rhyme, “guns … orisons”, to show how the soldiers all died alone with only the weapons that killed them by their side, and a visual rhyme, “all … pall” to indicate that the reality of war is entirely the opposite to what it seems - no glory, no joy and no heroism, but only death and destruction. Owen occasionally works with this technique in a reverse approach to create similar thought. For instance, the assonance, consonance and half rhyme based poem, ‘The Last Laugh’, contains an unforeseen full rhyme, “moaned … groaned”, to emphasise that nothing is ever fixed in war except the ghastly fact that the weapons are the true winners. Different forms of Para rhymes often work together with common schemes to ably bring out the main ideas of Owen’s poetry.

In ‘The Manhunt’, it talks about the effects of war and what happens to soldier’s after war on real people and their real relationships. The pain of emotion after war is often worse than pain that is physical and this is backed up in ‘Nettles’, for example “unexploded mine”, “buried deep in his mind”. The imagery of the mine sounds very dangerous and like it could go off any minute and explode, and makes the poem more realistic and visual to the reader. It also shows the reader that the mental state that the soldier is in right now is very unstable. In ‘Nettles’, Vernon Scannell writes about a topic that affects a larger number of people in the world and this is the

In his article “Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment,” Tony Hoagland argues that modern poetry is “oblique,” “fractured,” and “discontinuous”. He believes that poems no longer have systematic structure or development, making them appear random with skittish tendencies. Because of the poems that Hoagland feels are different, he categorizes most new poems to be like the kind he describes in his article. He further evaluates new poetry by claiming that “narrative poetry is tainted by overuse” and that the time we live in is “simply not a narrative age.” He uses several poems to support his argument such as, “Couples” by Mark Halliday and “First Person Fabulous” by Matthea Harvey. He utilizes these poems because they possess no true focal point and the structure restricts them from having a clear narrative.

causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely

When faced with the countless problems of war including death, disease, sorrow, and loss, soldiers develop and intense bond between one another as they seek support in one another. A brotherhood is formed among these soldiers who rely on one another for protection and companionship amid a time in their lives where they are faced with the constant threat of death and violence everyday of their lives. But what happens to them after the war? In After the War, poet brings awareness to how the war-torn soldier attempts to reestablish their self in a society they have been isolated from for so many years through use of free verse and repetitive phrases, which further reinforces the theme throughout the poem.

Poetry is a reduced dialect that communicates complex emotions. To comprehend the numerous implications of a ballad, perusers must analyze its words and expressing from the points of view of beat, sound, pictures, clear importance, and suggested meaning. Perusers then need to sort out reactions to the verse into a consistent, point-by-point clarification. Poetry utilizes structures and traditions to propose differential translation to words, or to summon emotive reactions. Gadgets, for example, sound similarity, similar sounding word usage, likeness in sound and cadence are at times used to accomplish musical or incantatory impacts.