The Manhunt

The Manhunt

His poetry demonstrates a strong concern for social issues
Subject
1. Physical and mental effects of living with injuries.
2. Perspective: wife of a solider who has sustained injuries at war and returned home.
Structure
1. Made up of a series of couplets, mostly un-rhymed.
2. Sense of fragmentation ( broken into pieces)
  1. Matches feelings of the wife - her husband has changed
3. Phases of wife searching for answers from her husband
Language
1. Title - pun on manhunt, wife searching for part of her husband that she lost at war.
2. Treating her husband with care: "handle and hold", "explore", "mind and attend"
3. Metaphor: "blown hinge" - comparing to objects rather than living things.
  1. "damaged, porcelain" - something hard, but easily broken.
    1. Reminder: "frozen river that ran through his face"
4. "Climb the rungs of his broken ribs" - detail of her hands exploring the altered body of her husband
  1. Idea of a ladder: gradual search for answers
Attitudes, Themes & Ideas
1. About the patience and care of love.
2. Explores the cost of war on those serving in the armed forces
  1. "grazed heart" literally because of "the metal beneath his chest" but also metaphorically
  2. Bullet is inside him like a "foetus" this changes their life, like having a child changes the relationship forever.
  3. Lines 23-24 metaphor "a sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind" the problem is mental not physical
  4. 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.
Comparison
1. In Paris with you
2. The Farmers Bride
3. To His Coy Mistress

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