lammas hireling Flashcards
structure
- no set structure
- light is used structurally to track the narrators descent into madness and insanity - ‘‘light from the dark lantern” “moon” “yellow witness” “nights” - gothic nuance of transgression
“After the fair, id still a light heart/And a heavy purse”
- poem begins with colloquial language and tone characterising the speaker as a no-nonesense farmer
- enjambment establishes a hierarchy - stereotype of money making one happy - capitalism - exploitative labour
“I knew him a warlock, a cow with leather horns.”
- devilish contrast to the man made vs the natural
-transgression beyond the natural world
-reference to the Irish riddle of a hare referencing the lammas festival - leather horns are symbolic of elizabethan cuckoldry = horned man is a symbol of married man whose wife commits adultery, this could explain his later actions as he links his deceased wife with the hireling imaging an affair
‘his lovely head thinned. his top lip gathered. his eyes rose like bread’
triplet of multi sensual and aesthetic imagery - observational - emphasis the metamorphosis
lip gathering = clef lip sign of witchcraft - transgression and fear of the unknown
his eyes rose like bread - highlights the fermentation and decay of transgression within gothic landscape
‘I carried him/in a sack that grew lighter at every step’
- detached way of killing
- psychopathic of finding monumental joy in lightness of load - lack of empathy
- personal confessional tone
- matter of fact tone
‘Bless me, Father, I have since. It has been an hour since my last confession.’
- subverts traditional forgive me to bless - anthesis
- dramatic monologue recited to a priest
- tormented guilty conscious
- blessed for sins not forgiven??
Themes of binary opposition
between the powerful/powerless
animal/human
life/death
moral/immoral
context
lammas paganism festival traditional
based on folklore and urban legend
tone
b m e
b - confident dialect
m - brutal and predatorial
e - confessional and guilty
