The Manhunt by Simon Armitage

The Manhunt by Simon Armitage

1. Context

   • Born 1963
   • Studied Geography
   • Worked as Probation officer
   • Raises strong concerns for social issues
   • PTSD

2. About

   • Written from perspective of the wife of a soldier who has injuries at war and has returned home a different person.
   • Poem explores physical and mental effects living with an injury.

3. Structure

   • Series of couplets mostly unrhymed creates a sense of fragmentation -matched feelings of wife as she has to understand who her husband has become

4. Language

   • The title puns on the idea of the 'manhunt', meaning literally a hunt to capture a man, often a criminal. Here the wife's search is for the husband she knew so well but who seems lost to her, metaphorically, after his experiences at war.
   • Many of the first lines of the couplets have prominent verbs, reflecting the activities of the wife as she conducts her "search".
     • Words and phrases like "explore", "handle and hold", "mind and attend"
       • are all references to careful treatment of her husband's injured body, as well as suggesting her patient care for his mental state.

5. Themes and ideas

   • About patience and care of love, poem is methodical, exploring her husbands injured body with love and care.
   • Cost of war on those serving in the armed forces.

6. Key quotes

   • Frozen river which ran through his face
   • Passionate nights and intimate days
   • The blown hinge of his lower jaw
   • The Parachute silk of his punctured lung
   • Grazed heart
   • Buried deep in his mind
   • Then and only then did I come close