Nights find me scoring walls like a madman, Totting up runs: one more day in the can. Rosier Jackson. Higher Unseen Poetry -Example Response This poem is very interesting in the inmate’s attitude towards crime. He does not show any signs of remorse or wishing he had not done it. But neither does it have the emotions of the crime not being his fault. The poem describes the life that the prisoners lead in Jail. The phrase “Vive given up trying to make anything different happen” evokes sympathy for the boredom they must be suffering. “like thousands of identical stitches” tries to make us empathic tit them.
It then talks of cruelty by saying he has become “like a madman”. This pejorative with connotations that drip with the abject cruelty of the confinement make us take pity on the inmates. Yet because of the contrast it does not seem so bad “videos or Stephen King”. Personally, bored as I am with revision, I would love to watch some videos or watch some Stephen King. The poem rhymes on every other line. Which gives a structure that shows the monotony of life in prison. It gives me the opinion that life in prison is boring for the inmates, it is not altogether unpleasant.
Every hour a step towards freedom”. I can’t help but empathic as I sit here writing my answer. How less free are they in comparison to us we are all chained down by things we don’t want to do. “It describes it like a cricket bat made out of matches”. I can think of my life as a book made out of pages of homework. The poem is simply written, without much complicated language. This might suggest that criminals are unintelligent. The mood of the poem is the monotonous way in which life drones on it seems as, an extension of it, to say that until we die we are not free. I find the phrase “in the can”.
This metaphor for the cell a prisoner is put in puts me in mind of the tin cans we store food in. They store and preserve things in for a long time. This shows perhaps the lack of rehabilitation. That the criminal mind is preserved, not changed by prison, and is Just waiting to be back out, free in the world. It is comfortable to think of the horrible repetitive boredom of Jail. To think of it as your reward for towing the line. Yet it is unnerving to think it is Just a matter of time or ” matches and then the matter of a “step” and the criminal is right beside you.
Free” to do what ever they like, probably more angry than when they went in because the days have “mount”-deed up in there. Perhaps his mind has changed, and now this “madman” is free to get revenge. – Now consider the following question: Write about the poem and its effect on you. You may wish to include some or all of these points: ; The poem’s content – what it is about; ; The ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about; ; The mood or atmosphere of the poem; ; How it is written – words or phrases you find interesting, the way the poem is structured or organized, and so on;
