manhunt vs wife in london

Question 1

thesis

Answer 1

Simon Armitage uses The Manhunt as a vehicle to highlight the deeply personal effects of war, exploring how trauma fractures the emotional and physical bond between loved ones. By contrast, Thomas Hardy uses A Wife in London to critique the impersonal and inevitable devastation of war, portraying its severance of relationships and the isolation of grief. Influenced by his disillusionment with the Boer War, Hardy emphasizes the cold detachment of death notifications, reflecting the broader societal cost of conflict.

Question 2

in opening lines, both poems establish their tone, while manhunt begins with intimacy disrupted by trauma

Answer 2

a wife in london immediately conveys isolation and inevitablility.

Question 3

first three quotes - she sit, a messenger, flashed,

Answer 3

‘she sits in the tawny vapour’ - fog symbolises isolation and foreboding.

‘a messenger knock cracks smartly’ abrupt, impersonal delivery of tragic news

‘flashed news is in her hand’ - brevity of life reduced to a telegram

Question 4

first manhunt quotes

Answer 4

‘only then would he let me trace’ - cautious slow progress
‘frozen river’ emotional distance

Question 5

topic statement 2

Answer 5

manhunt reveals physical and emotional scars of conflict, while a wife in london portrays the cruel irony of loss

Question 6

2nd - 3 quotes a wife in london

Answer 6

‘he-has fallen-in the far south land’ - fragmented syntax mirrors shock and detachment
‘of meaning it dazes to understand’ - incomprehension of loss
‘paged full of his hoped return’ - bitter irony of unfulfilled plans and dreams

Question 7

2nd - quotes for manhunt

Answer 7

‘damaged, porcelain collar-bone’
- metaphor for fragility pain
‘fractured rudder of shoulder blade’ - symbolising loss of control

Question 8

topic statement 3

Answer 8

poets take different approaches, armiatge offers tentative hope for reconnection, whereas hardy delivers a bleak message of the irrevocable loss caused by war

Question 9

3rd - quotes from a wife in london

Answer 9

‘the fog hangs thicker’ - grief remains oppressive and unchanging
‘And of new love they would learn’ - cruel irony of a future erased by death.
‘the irony’ -hardy’s final critique of war’s senseless destruction