This blackly comic poem captures beautifully the way in which someone who feels they might have lived their life in a way that is not constrained by the conventional demands of work and “getting and spending” (as Wordsworth put it) takes revenge on a hitchhiker who has managed just that by attacking him and throwing him out of his car whilst it is moving quickly enough for him to be in “third gear”.
The choice of a dramatic monologue helps Armitage to articulate the imagined thoughts of the man who feels he has missed out on the free lifestyle that only requires “just a toothbrush and the good earth for a bed” (line 8).
Another way of reading the poem is in strictly metaphorical terms wherein the hitcher may well be the speaker himself remembering himself as a before he was enslaved a conventional working life. He may be denying that another side of him actually existed by saying that he and the hitcher are not exactly the same age.
The speaker in the poem is clearly worried about being given the sack from work when he hears an uncompromising message on his telephone answering machine and this is the italicised line 3. He “thumbed a lift” to where his car was parked. This is puzzling because it suggests that he, too, may be seen as a hitcher.
He then described picking up a hitcher in Leeds, a man who was “following the sun from west to east” (line 7), suggesting that his life is dictated by natural rhythms, no the mechanical interruptions of an answering machine or the demands of work. The hitcher quotes the 1960s radical folk singer, Bob Dylan by saying that the truth is “blowin’ in the wind”, / or round the next bend.” (lines 8-9). This incenses the speaker as he resents being reminded of the fact that he is not as free as this man and neither does he seem to have the courage to be like him.
In a shocking display of violence he says, “I let him have it”, going on to detail attacking the hitcher with a “krooklok”, something designed to secure a car’s steering wheel and never intended for use as a weapon. In saying that he “let him out” (line 17) we understand that he means that he pushed him out deliberately. This is an appalling act on top of the head butt and six blows to the face with the krooklok mentioned earlier.
The remainder of the incident is reported as a reflection in the speaker’s rear view mirror. He is described as “bouncing off the kerb” (line 18). The speaker seems utterly unconcerned by this and casually reports, “We were the same age, give or take a week.” His brutality is contrasted with the gentleness of the hitcher who “liked the breeze / to run its fingers / through his hair” (lines 20-22). The speaker then fixes the time of the incident precisely by relaying the weather forecast to which he has clearly been listening on his car radio. This compounds his appalling lack of concerns and the fact that he can be so self absorbed as to observe, “The outlook for the day was moderate to fair” (line 23). This is dreadfully shocking as it uses the language of the shipping forecast to make clear that the death of the hitcher has not spoiled the day; quite the opposite in fact – things could get better.
The concluding statement leaves the reader in no doubt that the speaker is utterly amoral: “Stitch that, I remember thinking, / you can walk from there.” (lines 24-5). The implication is that the hitcher will never be walking anywhere again, even though we are certain that he has died. As mentioned earlier in this commentary, it could be that the speaker has to leave his former self behind and has described this in terms of a murder to draw attention to the effects of a conventional life on the average working person. This may not be acceptable as an interpretation so it is important to arrive at your own conclusion.
Showing posts with label Hitcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hitcher. 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)