Stage 2 English Responding to Texts: Poetry On a Portrait of a Deaf Man - Sir John Betjeman Casehistory: Alison (Head Injury) - Ursula Askham Fanthorpe Have you ever lost someone, or felt like you’ve lost part of yourself? Death is inevitable, and it is likely that we’ve all experienced some form of it. The poems I will be talking about today are On a Portrait of a Deaf Man by Sir John Betjeman and Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by Ursula Askham Fanthorpe. Both of which contain themes of loss and death. In On a Portrait of a Deaf Man the poet talks vividly about death, more specifically the death of his father. In tribute to his late father, this poem talks about the harsh reality of death and losing a loved one in graphic, detailed …show more content…
“The London clay come in” is also personified, as if it suggests that the clay can come in as if it had a mind of its own. Imagery is also used in the fourth and seventh stanzas. “maggots in his eyes” and “...now his finger-bones Stick through his …show more content…
Both poems use a lot of juxtaposition and imagery, although On a Portrait of a Deaf Man has significantly more imagery than Casehistory. Betjeman uses more stylistic feature such as, personification, oxymoron’s and repetition along with other language features such as emotive language, while Fanthorpe mainly used juxtaposition In both On a Portrait of a Deaf Man and Casehistory: Alison (head injury), the poets conveyed a before and after scenario. Alison talks about her drastically different past and present self and Betjeman views his father in the past and present in drastically different ways, his father when he was alive was spoken of with fondness but when he died Betjeman expressed his horror of what was happening to his decaying father. Another similarity between both poems is that the audience feels sympathy for both Betjeman and Alison. Both poems deal with the theme of death, Betjeman’s father died, but in slight contrast Alison is still alive its just that her past self won’t be able to have future she wanted for