snaith -CAMELS "the manhunt" poetry essay

The poem “the manhunt” describes the emotional effects on a soldier after a tragic war injury. Fighting in the 1992 Bosnia war has scarred a man, resulting in seemingly regular tasks becoming a constant trigger for the deep, lodged memories to unfold; the pop of a balloon, the cry of an innocent baby. A perspective of secondary impact is shown throughout the poem.

Armitage uses the poem to highlight psychological effects of war, and more importantly raise awareness to the trauma military families endure, enhanced by the narrative view of a loving wife. The writer conveys this through the metaphor “unexploded mine” showing distress and the unknown of waiting for the explosion in the soldier’s “mind”.  Furthermore, the metaphor signifies unreliability; there is no way of knowing if you have stepped to far on someone’s personal “mine”, revealing aggressiveness and volitivity to significant others.

The mood portrayed through the poem is one of fragility and the need to educate others into understanding the delicacy of a human’s body. This is particularly notable in “damaged, porcelain collar bone” where Armitage uses a comparison to “porcelain” to show how frail a bone is, linked through the colour of innocence, white. Additionally, I believe this also represents the vulnerability of his uncorrupted mind which was “damaged”, or chipped, like a porcelain plate, by the war.

 Themes of permanence and perpetual horror are introduced by the adjective “deep”. One interpretation could be that the bullet of emotional pain has been…