Simon Armitage's Poem Kid

Published in 1992 - the proverbial 'golden age ' of comics and cartoons - Simon Armitage 's poem, Kid, from a collection of poems with the same title, is an exploration of the downfalls associated with hero worship, and depending too heavily on these hero figures . Written from the perspective of Robin, Batman 's faithful sidekick, the poem orbits around Robin 's departure from childhood and into maturity, and showcases his apparent bitterness over Batman 's achievements constantly eclisping his.A large portion of the poem is spent degrading both the reputation and character of Batman, in an effort to make Robin look more upstanding in comparison. Despite it 's comical tone, Kid focuses on rather heavy subject matter, as the poem is about

When reading the poem for the first time, it is easy to belive that the poem starts off positive - with batman being referred to as a “big shot” (line 1) - and gets less so, but upon re-reading, we understand that the first few lines are, in fact, sarcasm. The poem orbits around the down sides of hero worship, as it is not a sustaining thing; no matter how great someone may seem, behind their cult of personality hides a flawed person . The poem develops its themes and ideas - that batman isnt as much of a hero as he 'd like us to think, and robin is the more heroic of the two - through a somewhat methodical destruction of his persona. By starting on a more positive note, and then illustrating his failures, it leads us to believe that the positive things we hear may not be true. An example of this is line 13, with the phrase “holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover” mocking batman for his affair with a married woman, parodying Batman 's use of the word “holy”, and using this repetition to exaggerate Batman 's failures. The climax, or turning point of the poem comes when robin exchanges the “Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number” for “jeans and a crew-neck jumper”, leaving behind a helpless batman, who ends the poem “punching the palm of [his] hand”(line 23) in boredom, alone, and without robin he is immaterial, “without a shadow” (line 20), like a