On my first Sonne and Stealing, Hitcher and My Last Duchess Essay Example
On my first Sonne and Stealing, Hitcher and My Last Duchess Essay Example

On my first Sonne and Stealing, Hitcher and My Last Duchess Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (1047 words)
  • Published: September 21, 2017
  • Type: Tasks
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a) Compare how the poets make the reader feel sympathy for the speaker in 'On my first Sonne' by Ben Jonson and the speaker in one poem by Carol Ann Duffy.

The poems 'On my first Sonne' by Ben Jonson and 'Stealing' by Carol Ann Duffy both make the reader feel sympathy for the speaker. This is represented in different ways in each poem by using their sympathetic language to show this.

Jonson starts his poem straight away making the audience feel sympathy. "Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sinne was too much hope of thee." This gets straight to the point of the poem and signifies to the audience what this poem is about and the emotion they should be feeling when reading it which is this case is sympathy for the

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speaker. This is very similar to 'Stealing' where in the third line it says "I wanted him, a mate."

This shows that the narrator in this poem is lonely and clearly has no friends. This automatically does the same thing to us as 'On my first Sonne' and makes us feel sympathy for him. This point about wanting a friend also crops up again in line 8 where it says "frozen stiff, hugged to my chest." The person in the poem hugged him hinting again to him wanting a friend.

In 'On my first Sonne' the narrator talks about pain to someone else which itself causes the reader to feel sympathy for the person feeling this pain. For example the poem talks a lot about the father's pain but the final line says "As what he loves may never like too much.

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Here the father decides he'll never love anyone else so dearly because he doesn't want to feel so much pain again. This thought of causing pain is also shown in 'Stealing' where it says "Part of the thrill was knowing that children would cry in the morning.

Life's Tough." This is talking about the children who had made the snowman and was probably excited about getting up in the morning to play in the snow again but when they get there they will find that the snowman is gone. The use of children being sad is a very strong point to create emotion from the audience and in some ways will cause them to feel hatred towards the person stealing this snowman even though he is only doing it to get a friend.

'Stealing' also states in the beginning of the final paragraph that he steals thing due to the fact of "boredom". This may not make people feel much sympathy but together with knowing he has no friends adds to the sympathy even more. Then in 'On my last Sonne' the narrator says "O, could I loose all father, now." Here he is threatening to kill himself as he would rather be dead than live without his son. This just tops things off with the level of sympathy as it will make people really thing about what he is saying and defiantly feel sorry for him as he wants to kill himself.

Overall there is an ample amount of sympathy from both poems and each one giving off this feeling of compassion in very similar ways.

b) Compare how the reader is made to feel disturbed by the

speakers' words and actions in one poem by Simon Armitage and one poem from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank.

The poems 'Hitcher' and 'My Last Duchess' both make the readers feel disturbed by each poem. Each poem is similar in the way that they shock the audience by using the story of abnormal murder in the poems.

'Hitcher' starts off by talking about his stress filled life which reveals the reason for him killing the hitch hiker. "the ansaphone kept screaming: One more sick-note, mister, and you're finished. Fired." Once he had picked the hitcher up he was feeling pressured from easy-going lifestyle the hitcher was leading thus resulting in murdering him. This would cause the reader to be disturbed for the reason in killing the hitcher as he killed him as he wished his life could be as easy as the hitchers.

This is similar to 'My Last Duchess' in the sense of unusual murder as the Duke was drove to murder his duchess because he was angry at the way she is happy. "A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad, too easily impressed." This shows how he disliked the fact of her being easily impressed and he tried to change this but he couldn't control her and this is why he ordered her death. This is quite disturbing for an audience as it is frustratingly annoying how he got her murdered because she had, in his eyes, made some mistakes when in reality she had done nothing wrong, it was him who wanted the power over her but couldn't have it.

In the poem 'Hitcher' the murderer talks about killing him as if

he doesn't even care. "I let him have it", "and didn't even swerve." This would disgust and make the audience feel disturbed by the way he is so relaxed and how proud he sounds of taking a man's life. This is quite an unusual way to go about killing someone and this would easily shock anyone. This point is also carried on by how he doesn't care at the end of the poem as it finishes by saying "The outlook of the day was moderate to fair. Stitch that, I remember thinking, you can walk from there." This would make the audience just think he must be evil which is similar to 'My Last Duchess' where he treats her as if she is a trophy. "That's my last duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive." He is clearly not bothered by her death which shows the evil in him and would cause readers to be disturbed.

Both poems create the audience to be disturbed when reading them by the way the murderers selfishly kill someone but then afterwards they don't even care about it and carry on with their everyday lives as if it never happened.

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