COMPARING TWO POEMS

Approaching the essay question for Poetry

 STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAY

 Introduction
 Situation
 Devices and effectiveness
 Conclusion
 METHODS OF APPROACHING YOUR
ESSAY-DIVIDED METHOD
To use the divided method for your poetry essay you can follow this plan.
 Introduction mentioning both poems(or stories) and the theme you plan to
focus on.
 All you have to say about one of the poems/short stories.
 All you have to say about the second poem/short story.
 Conclusion, mentioning both of your poems/short stories again and
highlighting the similarities and differences that are implicit in your two sections.
 ALTERNATING METHOD
 Introduction mentioning both poems/short stories and the theme you plan to focus on.
 Comparison 1(for example both poems compare life in the west Indies in more
advanced countries)
 Comparison 2 (both poems show how people in the north may be wealthier and more
progressive but they are less free than those in the Caribbean)
 Comparison 3 (Whereas „West Indies, USA‟ focuses mainly on the unreal image that
America presents to itself, „South‟ reminds readers that the pursuit of wealth and
progress led people of the North to enslave people, bringing great suffering)
 Comparison 4(You can provide this yourself)
 Conclusion, mentioning both poems/stories again, briefly commenting on which
poem/story you feel does a better job in persuading you.
Choose whichever method you are comfortable with!
 POINTS TO NOTE
 Paper two requires you to answer in essay form.This means that the answer must be a piece of
writing that demonstrates a smooth flow and is written with an excellent level of grammar and well
developed paragraphs.
 The question will be broken up into a,b,and c BUT DO NOT WRITE THE LETTERS IN YOUR
RESPONSE.
 Always check the marks allotted for each question.
 Be prepared to discuss at least two poetic devices per poem.
 Identify the device and comment on the effect achieved by that device.
 Poetry questions usually expect the student to know poetic techniques and messages in poems.
 Avoid storytelling-do not retell the story.Avoidusing words like after, then, before, when…if you
are using them in your essay…it may be because you are retelling the story…summarise…DO NOT
RETELL.
 Use link words in your paragraphs e.g whereas, similarly, in marked contrast etc.
 SAMPLE POETRY QUESTION
Both Little Boy Crying and Once Upon a Time present a relationship between father and son.
• Outline the nature of EACH relationship, explaining where your sympathies lie. You
should identify at least ONE poetic device in EACH poem, and comment on its
effectiveness.
  INTRODUCTION

•    In the poems Little Boy Crying by Mervyn Morris and Once Upon a Time
by Gabriel Okara, we are shown a relationship between father and son. Both
poems effectively use poetic devices to evoke our sympathy. (Can you see that
this Introduction has briefly covered everything that was asked for in the
question?)
 BODY ( PARAGRAPH 1)

•      In Little Boy Crying, the father has disciplined his three-year-old son,
insisting that he must not play in the rain. We see the child through the
father’s eyes. We see his hurt, his rage and his hatred for the ogre that
towers above him. The boy wishes that, like Jack the giant-killer, he could
destroy the cruel monster who delivered the ‘quick slap’. We also see the
sadness and compassion of the father—sadness that he has had to discipline
the child and compassion when he talks of how he longs to cuddle the boy
and play piggy-back with him again. We are left wondering which of the two
feels more pain.
 PARAGRAPH 2

• Similarly (a nice word to use in comparisons), in Once Upon a Time, the father is pained as he
observes his son. This time, though, the pain he feels is due to his awareness that, unlike his son, he
has lost his innocence. Whereas he used to be genuinely friendly, sincere and trusting, society’s
hypocrisy has taught him to put on false faces: ‘home face, office face, streetface’, etc. He has
learnt that people are just out for what they can get: ‘their left hands search my empty pockets’.
Looking at his son with his innocent laugh and genuine smile, the father suddenly is overcome by a
sense of his own deceitfulness and begs the son to teach him how to regain the innocence he has
lost.
 PARAGRAPH 3

• We feel sympathy for the father in the first poem because he is so torn between wanting
to cuddle and play with his son and recognizing the need to discipline him at times. But
we also feel sympathy for the son because he is so bewildered and hurt and helpless: it
all seems so unfair to him, and he cannot understand how his playmate has turned so
mean. The father in the second poem also wins our sympathy because we sense how
distressed he is at seeing, in the innocence of his son, how hypocritical and selfish he
has become. His tone of repentance also draws on our sympathy.
 PARAGRAPH 4
•   An effective device in Morris’s poem is the allusion to Jack the Giant Killer. It is
effective because it shows us the mind of a child, but it also lets us know that this is a
loving father who reads to his child. It shows us the helplessness of the child,
confronted by one much bigger and stronger. It also lets us see how the child totally
misunderstands his father, seeing him as being hateful and cruel. A key device in
Okara’s poem is the simile comparing the father’s smile to the open fangs of a snake:
‘my laugh in the mirror shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs’. The simile is
effective because it suggests that the innocence and joy of a smile has been taken over
by something dangerous and evil.
 PARAGRAPH (CONCLUSION)

A comparison of the two poems shows that fatherhood brings hurtful experiences. Both
fathers learn something as they contemplate their sons, and in both poems, there is a
sense of loss as each father deals with the reality of life.
• (Before you write your Conclusion, ask yourself what you have discovered as you wrote
your essay.)
 ASSIGNMENT

The speakers in the poems South and Test Match, Sabina Park compare the West Indies
with foreign lands. Write an essay outlining the situation in which EACH speaker comes
to make such a comparison, and show which of the two societies he prefers and why.
Examining ONE poetic device from EACH poem, show how it is effective in
communicating the speaker’s emotion.