Compare
how the poets present the effect of conflict in ‘Come On, Come Back’ and one
other poem.
Conflict would be mainly seen to be in physical
fights and such arguments but conflict is also apparent in the poems ‘Come On,
Come Back’ and ‘Hawk Roosting’. In these poems, we can interpret there to be
much inner conflict within the stanzas.
The poems share themes of power, violence, death
and delusion. There is a large semantic field of negativity in both poems, such
as: ‘hooked’ ‘kills’ ‘tearing’ ‘death’ and ‘locked’ in ‘Hawk Roosting’. These
words give us the image of a confident and strong force as we can almost hear
the tearing heads of prey with the onomatopoeia of ‘tearing’.
COCB also shares this theme of death with the
semantic field of ‘dead’ ‘icy’ ‘black’ ‘bitterly’ treacherous’ ‘seizing’
‘enemy’ - this gives us the visualisation of a
higher power’s grasp of Vaudevue which could be symbolism for the governmental
power upon the country[s1] [KE2] .
We see the symbolism with the quote: ‘ML5 Has left her just alive’. In this
quote, we are aware that the government have been using the young girl soldiers
and now we see how badly Vaudevue currently is. ‘ML5’ seems to be quite a
strong force as when Smith puts: “has left her”, it sounds as if the ML5 has
very human characteristics and we see Smith personifying the chemical. The word
“just” here, makes the reader really visualise the girl to be near death, as
opposed to how we would feel if the poet had wrote ‘has left her alive’. We see
how the war is affecting the civilians and how it has impacted upon them.
‘Hawk Roosting’ can be viewed as simply a poem
about nature as the quote: “The convenience of the high trees! The air’s
buoyancy and the sun’s ray” shows us of what nature means to the hawk. When he
talks about the trees, he talks about them being an ‘advantage’ to him which
gives us the sense that the hawk is dependent upon the beauty of nature and is
thankful for it.
There is also a large political metaphor in the ‘Hawk
Roosting’ poem, that the hawk is metaphorical for bullies and political
leaders, this could signify the bird’s inner weakness thus being the reason for
the gradient downward slope of stanza length, representing the gradual growing
weakness of the hawk.
We also see a gradual degrade of weakness within
‘Come On, Come Back’ as there could be said to be a look of a heartbeat in the
stanza length, which represents the journey that she is going through and her
coping with those conflicts, like in ‘Hawk Roosting’ as we see him losing
power. As the poem comes to three shorter lines at the
end and no more lines that would reflect the look of a pulse, this is
metaphorical for the end of her journey eg: death. But it could also represent
the end of the war that was currently going on that Vaudevue had to deal with.
The hawk’s manner could be metaphorical for the
government’s ideologies: thinking that they are powerful when really, they are
degrading. This links with ‘Come On, Come Back’ as the government may think
that their tactics are winning them the war but in reality, it is killing many
individuals of their country. There is a definite
theme of delusion[s3] [KE4]
within the poems. There is language to support this as in HR, the poet states:
“Nothing has changed since I began” and it is obvious that the Earth has
drastically changing all the time. The word “nothing” shows to us of how
strongly the hawk feels this way about his homeland and to him, there is no
other interpretation. In COCB there is a sense of delusion with the quote: “the
icy waters of the adorable lake”. The oxymoron here of the words “icy’ and
‘adorable’ shows us that it is Vaudevue’s mind-set that is perceiving the
waters to be this way and that in reality, it’s the ‘icy’ waters which later ‘seize
her in’ and ‘close above her head’. This can be blamed on the emotional
stability of Vaudevue and shows to us how delusional she was being to have
perceived the lake to be anything but dangerous.
We perceive there to be lots of enjambment used
throughout the poems such as: “over the ground she goes” in COCB and “my flight
is direct” in HR. This could be metaphorical for them both being on their
journeys together and their lives flowing in similar directions.
Similarly within the individual stanzas, there
seems to be no regular pattern there so in both poems we could say that there
is inner conflict with their emotions and represents their personal changing
views and individual ideologies.
The poems differ with their endings as the hawk
is seen to be arrogantly delusional with the line “I am going to keep things
like this.” The final ending of the full stop may be a glimpse of the hawk’s
inner conflict as he tries to persuade himself that ‘I am fine’ and that ‘I’m
not degrading, I am still strong.’ Whereas in ‘Come On, Come Back’ we see that
the conflicting thoughts have been enough to end her life as she commits
suicide at the end of the poem. We see this with the final line: ‘Come On, Come
Back’. The end stopped line [s5] [KE6] here
signifies the end of her conflicting thoughts and the end of her life.
These endings of the poems could mirror the
titles of the poems. COCB could be perceived to be so because it is the
favourite song of Vaudevue and the theme of thoughts from many people waiting
for Vaudevue to ‘come on, Vaudevue, come back’.
‘Hawk Roosting’ could mirror the final words of
the poem as the hawk, for me, has persuaded himself of his status and is then
‘roosting’: meaning here to congregate for rest or sleep; sound in conscience
as he has blinded himself with his deluded ideologies.
[s1]I
think I would like to see you picking a longer quote to really analyse in
detail now. The semantic field work is
great but to really push your grade it would be helpful to choose a juicy quote
and go through how it shows that symbolism here.
[s3]This
is interesting – can you find language which supports this interpretation?
[s5]It
would be better to call this an end stopped line as this would credit you for
structure
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