manhunt and hour essay

Comparative Essay- The Manhunt vs. Hour

Simon Armitage’s, ‘The Manhunt’ and Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Hour’ both use strong feelings to emphasize their core messages. While each author takes a different perspective on the nature of these feelings, in the end, both poems have an intense feeling of love at their core.
Armitage’s ‘The Manhunt’ is about a soldier coming home from the war with various injuries. It is told from the point of view of the wife/girlfriend of the soldier. As she slowly helps him recover from his physical wounds, she realises that not only does this require great patience and sensitivity but that his most severe wounds might be in his mind. It is these wounds that she hopes to heal by the end of the poem. Only when she has “widened the search” for the source of his pain does she “come close” to helping him.
Duffy’s ‘Hour’ is about a woman and her depth of emotion for the lover that she can only see for one hour. She goes through all the reasons why love is better than riches and provides true happiness even if the time you have is short. As she steals away her hour of lovers bliss, she tells the reader how she would choose each small moment with her lover over any amount of money or comfort. In the end, she concludes that “love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.”
Each poem makes reference to love and danger, restriction, the physical body and sensation, and time. The depth of emotion around these topics is intense but handled very differently in each poem. In ‘Hour’, the love is passionate and sexual. The lovers are probably married to other people, or facing some other restriction and their meeting is dangerous. This danger makes it exciting. Her passion for her lover is seen when she says things like “for thousands of seconds we kissed”. There are strong feelings of urgency and sexuality. In “The Manhunt”, the love is deeper and warmer. While the speaker tells us that there was a passionate homecoming, it is soon replaced by the slow and steady support of someone who truly loves another. The speaker shows us this warm and patient love when she says she could “feel the hurt of his grazed heart”. Each poem deals with a kind of restriction which serves to intensify the emotions. In ‘Hour’ the restriction is time and in ‘The Manhunt’ it is the mental and physical barriers standing in the way of the couple. Duffy makes many references in the poem to the restriction of time. It is one of the core themes in the poem. Lines such as “love’s time’s beggar” and “time hates love” make it clear that the speaker thinks that time is an enemy to love. The restriction on time is never made clear in the poem but lines like “we find an hour together” make the reader think that it is not easy to see each other regularly. This restriction of time on the lovers makes everything that happens while they are together seem more intense, more passionate and more precious.
In “The Manhunt”, the restriction is of a very different type. The soldier comes home from war with serious physical restrictions which are laid out for us by the speaker. His “damaged, porcelain collar-bone”, his “punctured lung”, his “broken ribs” are but a few of his physical injures outlined in the poem. These physical restrictions are not the real problem though. The real problems are his mental injuries. Although it is never said in the poem, we can guess that the soldier has post traumatic stress disorder, as well as the mental pain of being seriously injured. The poem is a step by step process of slowly getting to this deeper problem. The speaker starts with “phase one” of getting through the initial passion for his first homecoming, “only then” will he let her “explore” his injuries, “mind and attend” to their treatment. And finally, when she has patiently gone through step one and then step two, “only then” will he let her see his mental injuries. This physical and mental restriction intensifies the feelings of not only the couple but also the reader. The reader understands the high stakes of the situation. If the speaker does not more slowly and carefully though these steps of gaining his trust, she may set off the “sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind”.
Each poem uses the physical body as a metaphor to explore strong mental emotions. In ‘Hour’, the woman describes various aspects of her loves body. She admires his “hair like treasure”. She talks about how the light “turns his limbs to gold” and how she would rather look at the dew by his ear than an expensive jewel. The effect of this breaking down of body parts is very sexual in the poem. The reader gets the idea that they are probably naked and exploring each other’s bodies in a park or secluded garden. His body is also used to illustrate another theme in the poem which is comparative wealth, highlighting that his golden hair is better than real gold. The intensity in which she admires his physical body and their time together, “our shining hour” heightens the excitement of the speaker and reader.
The physical body is used very differently to heighten emotion in ‘The Manhunt’. Armitage also breaks down the body into parts, “the frozen river with ran through his face”, “the blown hinge of his lower jaw” and his “grazed heart”. This breaking down slows down the reader and makes us pay attention to each injury in a very intense way. Rather than say, “he had a lot of injuries”, we are made to think about each injury and its affect on the speaker. Instead of increasing the excitement, as was the case in ‘Hour’, the body is used here to slow down the reader and deepen their emotional connection with the speaker. As well, the repetition of “only then” further slows down the rhythm and deepens the feeling of empathy for what the speaker is faced with. The list of injuries is also used to intensify the real problem. The author offers up this huge list of physical injuries and then tells the reader that they are nothing compared to his real injury, the injury in his mind. By contrasting these two things, we see that even though is physical body is very damaged; those injuries can be easily treated with medical help. It is the injuries in his mind that may never heal. It is those injuries that the speaker is trying to get at.
Time is a major theme in both poems and is combined with the theme of love to heighten emotion. Both poems talk about how time is needed, or is precious, or has value behold wealth. However, in ‘The Manhunt’, time is a friend and in ‘Hour’ it is an enemy. In ‘The Manhunt’, time is a healer. The author slows down time and makes the passage of time clear. The author does this by his use of language. The repetition of “only then” extends time. Words such as “phase one” hint at a lengthy process and the last line extends time into the future; “then, and only then, did I come close.” It is clear that time carries on beyond the last line of the poem. The healing has just begun. This deepens the emotion and creates a strong bond between the couple and the reader. The author also sets up the idea of waiting. The speaker is patient. Time is required to heal the wounds of the soldier. Just as physical injuries need time to heal, the soldier needs time to open up to his lover and trust her with his deeper injuries. This giving of time is deeply loving and creates a sense for the reader that this is a long term relationship in which the speaker is willing to wait as long as it takes to break through the soldiers mental barriers. This steady commitment makes us respect the speaker and root for her cause.
Time is used in a very different way in Duffy’s ‘Hour’. Time is an enemy. It is personified and given evil qualities by the speaker. Time want to rob the speaker of her love. Language such as “time hates love” and “love’s time’s beggar”, set up time as wanting to limit love and destroy it as if time had a mind and an intention. There is an urgency to time in ‘Hour’ that is not present in ‘The Manhunt’. The speaker feels time closing in on her. Even though they kiss for “thousands of seconds”, the reader always feels the restriction of time. However, her “single hour” defies time by becoming longer and richer than any worldly wealth. In that hour, “time slows” and the lovers are “millionaires, backhanding the night”. In the end, even as time tries to reassert its power, the speaker takes her final victory over time by saying “time hates love, wants love poor, but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.”
The structure of each poem also affects how the each one is read and understood. ‘The Manhunt’ is much longer than ‘Hour’ with many breaks. Written in couplets, the reader needs to pause often to contemplate each of the soldier’s injuries. This strengthens the impact of each wound and increase the reader s empathy for the couple. ‘Hour’ is relatively short in comparison, with only three pauses. Written in quatrains, the reader takes in the images more quickly and the length makes it feel like more of a snapshot of a stolen hour than a lengthy process. Both poems use metaphor to emphasize their points. The body is used as a physical metaphor for mental emotion in both poems. Material wealth is used as a metaphor for inner wealth in ‘Hour’ such as “a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich” and weapon’s such as an “unexploded mine” are used as a metaphor for the unstable mental state of the soldier in ‘The Manhunt’.
Each author uses language and rhyme to accomplish their goals. In ‘Hour’, Duffy uses a quatrain structure with every second line rhyming to give the poem the feel of a classic love poem. This rhyme structure is widely used in sonnets as well as the classic couplet at the end. than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor, but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.
This structure intensifies emotion by concentrating the poem into three quatrains and one couplet. However, the couplet doesn’t rhyme like the rest of the poem which could suggest that there is an uncertain future for our lovers. On the other hand, ‘The Manhunt’ uses all couplets and is twice as long. The rhyme structure is chaotic, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not. This may suggest that while our couples bond is strong but that their problems also create a lot of chaos. However, unlike the uncertain future of our lovers in ‘Hour’, the last couplet in ‘The Manhunt’ suggests strength and union. every nerve in his body had tightened and closed. Then, only then, did I come close.
The use of “closed” and “close” united the two lines and gives us a feeling that the couple are strong and moving forward together.
Language is also a strong tool for increasing intensity of feeling. The language in ‘The Manhunt’ is heavy with metaphor and creates strong images that intensify the experience for the reader. Lines such as “the frozen river which ran through his face” and “the parachute silk of his punctured lung” give a rich image for each injury and objectify them as objects outside of the person, physical obstacles for the speaker to overcome. Language is also important in ‘Hour’ as Duffy uses alliteration to intensify her images such as “summer sky”, simile to make connections such as “your hair, like treasure on the ground” and juxtaposition such as “nothing dark will end our shining hour” to paint love as light and time closing in as dark. In this essay I have shown how each poem uses love and danger, restriction, the physical body, and time to heighten and deepen emotions. Each author uses structure and language to intensify images and connection. While these two poems are about very different circumstances, I have shown how they are merely two sides of the same coin. Each presents a world where love provides the strength to overcome the restrictions put in its way.