The Manhunt

The Manhunt

1. His poetry demonstrates a strong concern for social issues

2. Subject

   • Physical and mental effects of living with injuries.
   • Perspective: wife of a solider who has sustained injuries at war and returned home.

3. Structure

   • Made up of a series of couplets, mostly un-rhymed.
   • Sense of fragmentation ( broken into pieces)
     • Matches feelings of the wife - her husband has changed
   • Phases of wife searching for answers from her husband

4. Language

   • Title - pun on manhunt, wife searching for part of her husband that she lost at war.
   • Treating her husband with care: "handle and hold", "explore", "mind and attend"
   • Metaphor: "blown hinge" - comparing to objects rather than living things.
     • "damaged, porcelain" - something hard, but easily broken.
       • Reminder: "frozen river that ran through his face"
   • "Climb the rungs of his broken ribs" - detail of her hands exploring the altered body of her husband
     • Idea of a ladder: gradual search for answers

5. Attitudes, Themes & Ideas

   • About the patience and care of love.
   • Explores the cost of war on those serving in the armed forces
     • "grazed heart" literally because of "the metal beneath his chest" but also metaphorically
     • Bullet is inside him like a "foetus" this changes their life, like having a child changes the relationship forever.
     • Lines 23-24 metaphor "a sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind" the problem is mental not physical
     • Poem is not about judging the rights and wrongs of war. But the impact on a relationship. "Then, and only then, did I come close" - husbands problems lie in memories.

6. Comparison

   • In Paris with you
   • The Farmers Bride
   • To His Coy Mistress