The House Versus The New House: Compare and Contrast Essay
In literature home is rarely portrayed as a place of perfect happiness. Compare and contrast this for ‘The House’ and ‘The New House’.
I believe that the poem ‘The New House’ by Edward Thomas is about a person, most likely the poet due to the first person narrative that has moved into a new house. However, we can see from the language used in the poem that he does not like the house, and it constantly disappoints him. Robert Minhinnick’s poem ‘The House’, is, in my opinion, about a man in the loft of his home trying to fix the electrics, realising that the house owns him, rather than vice versa as you’d expect. Both of these poems certainly do not portray happiness through their meanings, and rather give the houses negative connotations. I believe this would have a shock effect on the reader, who would expect poems about people’s houses to have a happy theme.
The structure of ‘The House’ is that of five stanzas all of equal length and line length, which I believe represents the tediousness of the house, which is obviously a word associated with something of ‘perfect happiness’. In addition to this, the poem also shows lots of links to conflict, using language that has connotations to war, such as ‘warfare’ and ‘territory’. This is no different in the structure of the poem, and it could be said that the identical stanzas represents the electricity off and on, and similarly to this, the poems rough iambic pentameter is rough like the houses electricity flow. I believe that it’d be difficult for a reader to understand the significance of this poems structure because it’s not something you notice at first glance, however once they get to grips with it they’d realise that the structure itself tells a story.
In comparison, ‘The New House’ has a mixture of line lengths, with them alternating from short to long each line. I believe that the fact there is short then long lines represents the ups and downs of life within the house for the individual featured in the poem.
I believe that the poem ‘The New House’ by Edward Thomas is about a person, most likely the poet due to the first person narrative that has moved into a new house. However, we can see from the language used in the poem that he does not like the house, and it constantly disappoints him. Robert Minhinnick’s poem ‘The House’, is, in my opinion, about a man in the loft of his home trying to fix the electrics, realising that the house owns him, rather than vice versa as you’d expect. Both of these poems certainly do not portray happiness through their meanings, and rather give the houses negative connotations. I believe this would have a shock effect on the reader, who would expect poems about people’s houses to have a happy theme.
The structure of ‘The House’ is that of five stanzas all of equal length and line length, which I believe represents the tediousness of the house, which is obviously a word associated with something of ‘perfect happiness’. In addition to this, the poem also shows lots of links to conflict, using language that has connotations to war, such as ‘warfare’ and ‘territory’. This is no different in the structure of the poem, and it could be said that the identical stanzas represents the electricity off and on, and similarly to this, the poems rough iambic pentameter is rough like the houses electricity flow. I believe that it’d be difficult for a reader to understand the significance of this poems structure because it’s not something you notice at first glance, however once they get to grips with it they’d realise that the structure itself tells a story.
In comparison, ‘The New House’ has a mixture of line lengths, with them alternating from short to long each line. I believe that the fact there is short then long lines represents the ups and downs of life within the house for the individual featured in the poem.