Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The Manhunt
- Context
- Laura's poem - Laura is the wife of Eddie
Beddoes, a soldier who served as
peace-keeper in Bosnia before being
discharged due to injury + depression
- The Manhunt
- an intensive search for a person
- negative connotation - victim/ criminal
- After the first phase, After passionate
nights and intimate days,
- misleading - seems to be about a
health + passionate relationship
- life the first stage of a relationship-
metaphorically true as the man is so broken
+ changed + he is not the man she married
- contradict rest of poem -
like relationship, they
don't fit together
- only then would he let me trace the
frozen river which ran through his face
- metaphor of 'frozen river'- something unable to do
what it is designed to do. unable to function
- frozen - stuck, unable to
escape from his
position/feelings
- river - depth +
veracity to his
feelings
- only then would he let me explore
the blown hinge of his lower jaw,
- 'only then' repetition + short verses - show
tiny amounts of progress being made
- unable to talk to her
- blown hinge - a flexible attachment
which allows things to open or shut
- mentally unhinged -
dangerous, volatile,
unpredictable
- unable to function - can't be a
soldier (been discharged) + can't
be a husband (can't love + protect
wife)
- unable to open up/ communicate
- and mind and attend the factor rudder of shoulder-blade,
- rudder - device used to steer a ship
- unable to function - stuck, static,
unable to move forward
- Only then could I bind the struts
and climb the rungs of his broken
ribs
- turn in poem - wife trying to
mend him, sees it as her role
- and feel the hurt of
his grazed heart.
- soft gentle sounds - softness of
intimacy + emotion
- emotional pain + damage
- feel - starts to feel, understand
his pain, empathise with how he
is feeling
- Skirting along, only then could I picture the scan,
the foetus of metal beneath his chest where the
bullet had finally come to rest.
- the bullet is like a foetus - it is
inside of you, it grows +
develops
- metaphor - that bullet +
wound will grow + develop +
continue to grow + cause more
impact on soldier
- Then I widened the search, traced
the scarring back to its source
- 'widened the search' - manhunt,
reminds us of importance of title,
hostile + negative imagery reflects
hostility in man
- Then, and only then, did I come close.
- AMBIGUITY - after long time of
little steps trying to put him back
together + work through his pain...
- close to each
other, bonded +
united again
- close to understanding him, didn't
fully emphasise, understand or
find him, but was nearly there
- and handle and hold the
damaged, porcelain collar-bone
- delicate ceramic - soldier is
delicate, soft + easy to break
- and finger and thumb the parachute
silk of his punctured lung
- parachute - military, broken
parachute - unable to function
- silk - delicate, soft side
- to a sweating, unexploded mine buried
deep in his mind, around which every
nerve in his body had tightened and closed
- cause of all his pain, deep
emotional root, is unexplored mine
- mine - if you get too close it will
be dangerous, if you touch it you
can't let go because you'll blow up