Compare How Poets Present the Effects of Conflict in Belfast Confetti Essay Example

damage caused to society by war.

The poem “Belfast Confetti” brings together a public event and a personal response to show the effects of conflict on an individual: an explosion in Belfast with armed forces and the speakers own response as the explosions of the bombs interrupt his thoughts. These two aspects of the poem are united together through extended metaphors of punctuation throughout the poem. The quote “It was raining exclamation marks” shows not only the chaos and destruction around the speaker but captures the atmosphere, as exclamation marks are usually used when someone is upset or angry.

This portrays the image of destruction and innocence being destroyed to the reader. Within “Yellow Palm” although metaphors are used they are not used to portray the panic and disruption the same as in “Belfast Confetti”. Instead, they help to contrast against the beauty and innocence of the scenery around the speaker. The quote “I saw a Cruise missile, a slow and silver caravan on its slow and silver mile, and a beggar child turned up his face and blessed it with a smile. ” poet juxtaposes the image of an innocent child begging on street, by a cruise missile.

The speaker implies his views by observing, and leaving the reader to make their own connections between moral and political ideas. Another point made was the use of imagery throughout each of the poems. Within both poems, the poet uses images around him and creates a portrayal of negativity and destruction. Within the “Yellow Palm” the poet contrasts positive six positive vignettes of life in the city which accumulate to show the slow

destruction of the city. This compares to “Belfast Confetti” in which the poet uses the destruction and chaotic to portray the effect of the bomb on the community.

The poet Ciaran Carson uses the names of streets and roads in lines 11-13 working on both a literal and metaphorical level. The street names are named after generals and battles and places from the Crimea war. The quotation “Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street - Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street. Dead end again. ” By doing this the poet likens the riot happening during the bombing to battles that the community has fought in bigger wars. Showing the effects of how much the country and city has been through, and illustrating the speakers paranoia and alienation in a place he doesn’t know.

On The other hand we have the contrast in images of life throughout the poem “Yellow Palm”. The poet Robert Minhinnick uses powerful images of religions and traditional images at the start of each verse and the negative image portrayed shows the effect of conflict. An example of this can be seen in the quote: “I heard the call to prayer and I stopped at the door of the golden mosque to watch the faithful there but there was blood on the walls and the muezzin’s eyes were wild with his despair.

Within this quote we have the positive image of prayers and golden mosques showing hope and belief met by the blood on the walls, whether metaphorically or literal, showing the destruction and chaos caused by recent history changing the society for the worse. To conclude

although there are similarities in the way in which both poets present conflict, they both also use complete opposite techniques to illustrate the chaos and destruction caused my conflict. With Ciaran uses language and punctuation itself to create images and portray conflict, contrasting to the usage of negative and positive imagery and oxymoron throughout.