Comparison of Blessing and Island Man
Characters are the people whose personalities, emotions or actions are portrayed in a poem and poets use various techniques to present their characters. In ‘Island man’ we see a Caribbean island man who is away from his home of the blue seas, the soft sands and is waking up reluctantly to the horrible reality of London, leaving his peaceful past on the pillow. Whereas ‘Blessing’ is strongly about the desperation of people in water ridden countries, but with the very rare stroke of luck and a water pipe bursts, then the utter appreciation and gratitude is shown.
Receive The structure of the poems is related to how the characters are portrayed. The structure of ‘Island Man’ consists of five verses of different lengths in which some words are separate. This gives the poem a pause to represent the slow strain of effort from the island man to wake up. In contrast the visual poet Imtiaz Dharker’s ‘Blessing’ is made up of four verses that grows in shape.
This is to emphasise the pick-up of speed as the tone of the poem changes from the temptations of the mind to the frantic desperation of the hands. In each poem the style of language used affects the perception of the characters as well. In ‘Blessing’ as the island man is still waking up from his home life in his dream, the repetition that the poet uses reiterates the time in which he is taking to wake up from him confusion and conjure up his thoughts “groggily groggily”.
Also the poets replaces the correct, appropriate words with words of the island to show more in depth the merging of waking from his dream “Comes back to sands”. However, in ‘Blessing’ the use of imagery used by the poet shows a clear picture of the people in there reckless state of deprivation as the water pipe bursts, yet in there utter joy from the ‘rush of fortune’ that has come their way “From the huts, a congregation… “, “frantic hands”. The feelings and attitudes expressed in these poems also affect the way the characters come across.
The island man’s feelings start in a state of serenity as dreaming about home “the sound of a blue surf” but then throughout the poem with the small backtracks of confusion, the sounds and actuality of London life creep back in finally leaving him feeling isolated from the rest of the world “Another London Day”. In contrast, ‘blessing’ does the opposite, the poem starts of with the total bereavement of the people, yet as if like a flick of a switch in the middle of the poem it changes its attitude as the water pipe bursts and the children and adults all come together as one to celebrate what most take for granted.
These poems have characters that are similar in the way in which they are not happy with how there life is and wish for better. Yet saying that, the things they are wishing for are different, the island man who has all things needed is wishing for the simpler life of just the sands and the seas. However the people in ‘Blessing’ who have the simpler life are wishing for the so called luxuries in there eyes. They are wishing for what each other have.
