- Meaning - The Hero is about the woman's grief and how she's been lied to. The Seed-Merchant's Son is about the man's grief and how he realises how precious life is. Both poems have a definite story line but I think that The Seed-Merchant's Son has a more interesting story line because it has more elements to it with how he realises how precious life is.
- Each poem is in a different tense, with The Hero in the present, and the The Seed-Merchant's Son is mainly in the past.
- The Hero emphasises on how she's been lied to where as The Seed-Merchant's Son emphasises more on how his son used to be and in the end, the moral.
- Craftsmanship - Both poems have a rhyme scheme, but both are very different. The Hero has two; rhyming couplets and alternate, and The Seed-Merchant's Son just has rhyming couplets. Using two different rhyme schemes in The Hero makes it seem more complicated, so it has a more serious mood and you focus more on the meaning, than the craftsmanship. With The Seed-Merchant's Son, the rhyming is simple and slightly childish but this just adds to emphasis on how young he was when he died.
- Neither poems have a very simple rhythm, but The Hero does have a more complicated rhythm and this again makes the poem more serious, whereas with The Seed-Merchant's Son, the simpler rhythm emphasise again on how young he was. Herbertson has not made the rhythm really simple though because then it would like a limerick and would detract from the meaning.
- In The Seed-Merchant's Son the writer uses symbolism when he describes the seeds; he represents them as new life. This shows us the moral. In The Hero, Sassoon doesn't use symbolism, but I don't think it needs any.
- In The Hero, the writer uses one metaphor; "cold-footed useless swine," This metaphor in context emphasises the lie that the woman is being told and adds to the seriousness and effect of the poem. In The Seed-Merchant's Son Herbertson doesn't use metaphors but I think if he did it wouldn't add anything, just take away from the simple feel and the emphasis on the age of his death.
- Both poems use enjambment and ceasural pauses.
- Effect - You feel empathy in both poems: In The Hero, you feel very sympathetic for the woman because you realise that she is being lied to and that many others like her might have been lied to as well. In The Seed-Merchant's Son you feel sympathy for the Seed-Merchant because he is now all alone and his son was the only thing that was keeping him young.
- The Seed-Merchant's Son has moral whereas The Hero doesn't. The moral in The Seed-Merchant's Son is that you don't appreciate what you have or life until it's gone.
From Ed Parry
Just adding on Ed's points, both poems have 2 different perspectives. In The Hero the perspectives are from the old women and the army general, whilst in The seed merchants son it is from the point of view of the seed merchant and someone watching him sow his fields.
ReplyDeleteAsh
i think these are some very intelligent points Ed,,
ReplyDeletemaybe it wold be interesting to find out whether the authors have widow mothers or fathers..?
i will find what out. it would be very interesting if we found out if Sassoon had a widow mother for example.
Georgie :)
Wikipedia gives a lot of information about Sassoon and I shall pull some points from it and give the web address:
ReplyDeleteSassoon's father was Alfred Ezra Sassoon and died of TB in 1894. He was Jewish and came from a wealthy Indian Baghdadi Jewish merchant family, but he was disinherited because he married outside of his faith. Sassoon's mother was from the Thornycroft family, a family of sculptors who made some of the best known sculptors in London.
Seigfried Sassoon was the second of three sons, his other brothers being Michael and Hamo. When he was four his parents split up. Sassoon's father did visit weekly but his mother would stay in her drawing room, still very upset about the situation.
This state of self-imprisonment maybe reflected in the poem, for when he talks about the old woman with the silver hair, and the widow, the caring one, these could all be references to his mother.
From Ed Parry
And here is the web address that I forgot to attach!
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon
From Ed again!
Another point I'd like to add to our list of 10, is:
ReplyDelete11. 'The Seed-Merchants Son' also has a rhetorical question embedded within it. This involves the reader with the poem much more effectively, in my opinion, than any other technique. When one is faced with a question, even if it is rhetorical, there is no stopping the imagination create that unwanted answer anyway, the author makes one feel as though one plays a larger role in the poem, when one's opinions are requested. Personally, I think this technique is very effective, but only in the correct situation (this being one); if 'The Hero' had a rhetorical question, it would be too much involvement of the reader for the writing-style of which the author has adapted. He uses language only read in a story, and therefore, when the story is in third person, I believe the reader's input is uncalled for. So the writer did himself a favour of not including a rhetorical question in 'The Hero' because it would not have had the same effect on the reader as it does in 'The Seed-Merchant's Son', this would therefore make the question pointless.
EVELYN
Too add to Ed's first point and all other comments made, although the overall morals of the story are different, you can see the connection not only between these two poems but with many others, and probably many real life experiences.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that bothinclude an overwhelming feeling of grief and sadness, and even though they may have been feeling such pain for different reasons, it is clearly evident what an effect the war had on thousands of lives. Both the mother in The Hero and the father in The Seed-Merchants Son are now alone, and have to live the rest of their lives with a huge part missing.
In my opinion, both poems effectively tap into the readers emotions and really make you feel as though you could have been there, could have been unfortunate enough to experience the pain that so many did.
From Lucy (: