A disaffected, unemployed boy searching for ways of filling a day of extreme boredom decides to kill something. Having killed a fly by squashing it against a window, his killing instinct extends to flushing a goldfish down a toilet. He craves more excitement and leaves his house, clutching a bread knife. The poem closes with the terrifying idea that anyone could fall victim to a random attack by such a person.
It would be too easy to read this poem as a criticism of psychopaths as it draws attention to the potential effects of poor employment prospects. The irony of the title illustrates how school does not lead to employment for many young people but to protracted periods of 'leisure'. One might go as far as to say that 'leisure' is simply a euphemism for idleness. There is a simultaneous horror and sympathy communicated in the poem.
The strong narrative impulse in the poem, written in the voice of the boy, is striking. Feeling frustrated and 'ignored', he resorts to physical violence as a means of exerting power over others. He assumes absolute authority by deciding to, 'play God'.
He does not understand Shakespeare but claims to be a genius. This is an allusion to King Lear, perhaps Shakespeare's darkest tragedy. It recalls Gloucester's words, 'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Gods, / they kill us for their sport' (Act 4, Scene 1). The act of killing the fly cost the boy no thought at all just as he holds the lives of his cat, goldfish and budgie cheap. In playing God, the boy is actually given some of God's words from Genesis to speak: 'I see that it is good' ironically reverses the import of God's reaction to his creation by showing us someone who is bent on destruction. The blackly comic, 'The budgie is panicking', along with 'The cat avoids me' provide temporary relief from the stark reality of what this person is bent on. He seeks attention and is not pleased that the people at the social security office do not acknowledge him in the way he would like. He associates himself with 'talent' and 'genius', telling a radio presenter that he is a superstar.
The final stanza ominously begins with the sentence, 'There is nothing left to kill'. This again reminds us of his anti-type, God who rested after creating everything. Here, the persona in the poem is searching for something or someone to destroy. Having failed to be famous for a while on radio, he decides to kind someone to stab. The penultimate line of the poem conveys the warped associations made in the mind of the homicidal boy: 'He cuts me off' clearly indicates that the boy has been dismissed as being deranged by the radio station receptionist. The word 'cut' clearly links with what he decides to do in taking a knife out onto the street. The arresting visual image of 'The pavements glitter suddenly' suggests both an odd flaring of decision to act in the mind of the potential murderer and, by transference, the flash of the blade as it catches the light. 'I touch your arm' is both sinister in its controlled intimacy and ironically reductive since it is not the hand of a creative God reaching out but that of a killer.
The poem does not defend this sort of person's actions but does raise questions about the potential effects of unemployment and alienation born of an inappropriate school curriculum for those who would do better learning more practical subjects. In this way it is a sobering reminder of what disaffection can lead to.
Duffy captures the 'voice' of the boy in his characteristic vocabulary. After the opening stanza's statements of intent: 'I am going to kill something' and 'I am going to play God', Duffy moves from the future indicative to the simple present: 'I squash', 'I pour', 'I pull', and 'I touch'. The stark, unembellished short sentences indicate a determination to act. His resentment is also suggested through these clipped statements.
Showing posts with label Education for Leisure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education for Leisure. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Poetry Model Answer
In “My Last Duchess” Robert Browning’s Duke seems to have been jealous of his former wife. Compare Browning’s treatment of this idea with the same theme in one other pre-1914 poem and two poems by Carol Ann Duffy or Simon Armitage.
“My Last Duchess” opens with the speaker, the Duke, inviting his visitor to admire a painting of his ex-wife: “I call
That piece a wonder”
He seems to treasure
“The depth and passion of its earnest glance”
and we might expect in this early part of the poem that the painting helps him to recall the serious love of his (dead?) wife fondly.
The painting is so important to him that he rarely allows other people to view it – it is hidden by a curtain, and he is the only person permitted to reveal the painting. By now we may start to feel alarmed: why does he want to hide his ex-wife from view?
Gradually the reason emerges: he was, and still is, jealous of her, because her joy came not just from her husband’s company. She was “too easily impressed”, and “her looks went everywhere.” Her fault, in his eyes, was that she considered pleasing him no more important than enjoying the sunset, eating cherries or riding her horse.
She failed to give him the attention he craved, and worse still, she took no account of his breeding, his nine hundred years old family name. Yet he could not tell her of his displeasure because that would mean stooping to her level, “and I choose
never to stoop.”
His jealousy at her constant smiling grew and grew, until the sinister conclusion:
“I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.”
The Duke dismisses her fate, presumed dead, coldly, abruptly, as he admires instead a bronze statue which he has been able to bend to his will.
In “The Song of the Old Mother”, in contrast, we feel not horror but sympathy. Her envy is directed at the young. Her lament is brief, despairing, almost monosyllabic, which gives the poem a tone of slow, sad resignation.
She describes in simple language her chores: rising early, lighting the fire, cleaning, cooking. Her life holds no pleasures, unlike those of the young, whose only thoughts are of trivial matters:
“the matching of ribbons for bosom and head”
The poem ends in a bitter couplet which points up her passive resignation, with the powerful rhyming of “old” and “cold” to emphasise the burden of age and “the seed of the fire” of her life dying feebly away.
The protagonist of “Education for Leisure” seems younger, filled with envy of the whole world. He (his simple speech, the emphasis on “I”, and the tendency to violence sound more male than female) expresses his frustration at the outset:
“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.”
Because he is constantly ignored, he, like the Duke, is determined to take control, to play God with other creatures’ lives. His aggression increases in scale, from crushing a fly to flushing away a goldfish. At first his threats have a humorous edge, when the cat and the budgie try to escape him.
However, his self-delusion is growing rapidly. He believes he is a genius, and is desperate to be noticed by “them” as one:
“I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.”
When the people at the job centre and the radio presenter spurn his autograph and his “superstar” status, something snaps inside him.
The poem ends in four sudden, short sentences laden with danger:
“The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.”
The violent assault comes earlier in “Hitcher”, enabling the reader to feel the weight of the speaker’s callous indifference to the life he has ended. Bored by his job, and jealous of his hitch-hiker’s untroubled attitude to life,
“following the sun to west from east”
he attacks him, repeatedly, gratuitously, and ejects him from the moving car.
The speaker is proud of the skill with which he dispatched his victim – “didn’t even swerve” – rather than showing any remorse. On the contrary, having watched him
“bouncing off the kerb”
he concludes with a vengeful, harsh farewell, completely out of touch with reality, just like the killer in “Education for Leisure”:
“Stitch that, I remember thinking,
you can walk from there.”
In both poems, as in “My Last Duchess”, we find little to like or sympathise with in the central figure because he reveals no emotions other than naked envy or jealousy.
“My Last Duchess” opens with the speaker, the Duke, inviting his visitor to admire a painting of his ex-wife: “I call
That piece a wonder”
He seems to treasure
“The depth and passion of its earnest glance”
and we might expect in this early part of the poem that the painting helps him to recall the serious love of his (dead?) wife fondly.
The painting is so important to him that he rarely allows other people to view it – it is hidden by a curtain, and he is the only person permitted to reveal the painting. By now we may start to feel alarmed: why does he want to hide his ex-wife from view?
Gradually the reason emerges: he was, and still is, jealous of her, because her joy came not just from her husband’s company. She was “too easily impressed”, and “her looks went everywhere.” Her fault, in his eyes, was that she considered pleasing him no more important than enjoying the sunset, eating cherries or riding her horse.
She failed to give him the attention he craved, and worse still, she took no account of his breeding, his nine hundred years old family name. Yet he could not tell her of his displeasure because that would mean stooping to her level, “and I choose
never to stoop.”
His jealousy at her constant smiling grew and grew, until the sinister conclusion:
“I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.”
The Duke dismisses her fate, presumed dead, coldly, abruptly, as he admires instead a bronze statue which he has been able to bend to his will.
In “The Song of the Old Mother”, in contrast, we feel not horror but sympathy. Her envy is directed at the young. Her lament is brief, despairing, almost monosyllabic, which gives the poem a tone of slow, sad resignation.
She describes in simple language her chores: rising early, lighting the fire, cleaning, cooking. Her life holds no pleasures, unlike those of the young, whose only thoughts are of trivial matters:
“the matching of ribbons for bosom and head”
The poem ends in a bitter couplet which points up her passive resignation, with the powerful rhyming of “old” and “cold” to emphasise the burden of age and “the seed of the fire” of her life dying feebly away.
The protagonist of “Education for Leisure” seems younger, filled with envy of the whole world. He (his simple speech, the emphasis on “I”, and the tendency to violence sound more male than female) expresses his frustration at the outset:
“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.”
Because he is constantly ignored, he, like the Duke, is determined to take control, to play God with other creatures’ lives. His aggression increases in scale, from crushing a fly to flushing away a goldfish. At first his threats have a humorous edge, when the cat and the budgie try to escape him.
However, his self-delusion is growing rapidly. He believes he is a genius, and is desperate to be noticed by “them” as one:
“I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.”
When the people at the job centre and the radio presenter spurn his autograph and his “superstar” status, something snaps inside him.
The poem ends in four sudden, short sentences laden with danger:
“The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.”
The violent assault comes earlier in “Hitcher”, enabling the reader to feel the weight of the speaker’s callous indifference to the life he has ended. Bored by his job, and jealous of his hitch-hiker’s untroubled attitude to life,
“following the sun to west from east”
he attacks him, repeatedly, gratuitously, and ejects him from the moving car.
The speaker is proud of the skill with which he dispatched his victim – “didn’t even swerve” – rather than showing any remorse. On the contrary, having watched him
“bouncing off the kerb”
he concludes with a vengeful, harsh farewell, completely out of touch with reality, just like the killer in “Education for Leisure”:
“Stitch that, I remember thinking,
you can walk from there.”
In both poems, as in “My Last Duchess”, we find little to like or sympathise with in the central figure because he reveals no emotions other than naked envy or jealousy.
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