The lammas hireling - Ian Duhig Flashcards
Title
Harvest festival, connotations of new life and sanctity which juxtaposes the supernatural tone of the poem
‘i’d still a light heart
and a heavy purse’
- ambiguous partial confession as he doesn’t go into detail
-contrast creates a sense of greed, creating a sense that the speaker is frugal with money
‘i hunted down her torn voice to his pale form’
- predator - ‘hunted’
- ‘torn’ - savage and primal connotations
- ‘pale form’ - dehumanisation - lack of distinguished identity for both his wife and the boy
‘I knew him a warlock’
- archaic Irish folklore - justifying willing the boy
‘i levelled
and blew the small hour through his heart’
‘blew’ - violence of act doesn’t align with the softness of how it was phrases
- ‘heart’ - emotive connotations
‘yellow witness’
- yellow is usually seen as a dirtied white, refering to the speakers morality
- ‘witness’ - paranoia as a leader sees his corruption
‘his lovely head thinned. his top lip gathered
his eyes rose like bread.’
- compassionate description of death and transformation - simile
‘grew lighter at every step’
depleting guilt
‘there was no splash.’
feeling of guilt or an illusion in his head
‘it has been an hour since my last confession’
-the speaker is repenting, creating a sense of guilt as he turns to religion against supernatural
- reinforces paranoia that runs through the poem. this is reinforced by the regular line length with emphasis on the speakers longing for order and religion
Overall messages
- explores the idea of moral transgression and greed as boundaries of human interaction are blurred, making the reader question the narrator’s reliability
Structure
- narrative voice - from the speaker taking up the persona of a farmer
- a dramatic monologue that tells the story is a farmer who hired a hireling to help with his cows, but then brutally kills him
- no rhyme scheme, four - six-line stanzas
- enjambment to create a free-flowing narrative
