‘Hitcher’By Simon Armitage

What really annoys you? Spider-diagram ideas about the things

which you hate most about day-to-day living.

Consider things which make you feel disillusioned and possibly alienated within society.

How far would you go if things simplygot too much?

Draw around each of the stanzas. What shape do they remind you of? The five stanzas have a regular five-

line shape with the third line the longest in each.

The visual shape of the stanzas is interesting. The third line seems to push outwards to a point of climax, making the stanzas arrow-shaped.

Dramatic monologue ‘Hitcher’ is a dramatic monologue – it

provides the reader with partial information about the events described.

It is almost confessional, as if spoken to the police.

What would change if we were to think about the events from the point of view of a neutral observer?

themes The poem appears to be about an act

of random violence. Is it a warning against the perils of

hitchhiking? What is the speaker’s motive? (Look

at the description of the hitcher and remember a hitcher is someone who wants a free ride.)

Overall, the narrator is…Unreliable UnpredictableSelf-centred UnstableViolentCallousCynical

And he cares nothing for other people’s fates.

I’d been tired, under

the weather, but the ansaphone kept screaming:

One more sick-note, mister, and you’re finished. Fired.

I thumbed a lift to where the car was parked.

A Vauxhaul Astra. It was hired.

First person narrator

Cliché (stock phrase)

Narrator is materialistic

Why in italics? Is this the

narrator’s justification?

‘Hired’, ‘tired’, ‘fired’ all rhyme but do not all appear at end of lines so examples of internal rhyme

I picked him up in Leeds.

He was following the sun to west from east

with just a toothbrush and the good earth for a bed.

The truth

he said was blowin’ in the wind,

or round the next bend

The hitcherHippy has a relaxed and carefree attitude

Lyrics from a Bob Dylan song. The hippy

peppers theconversation withfragments of pop

culture.

Narrator envies the lifestyle ofthe hippy and his outlook on life

Romantic tone – hitcher has freedom, narrator wants.

I let him have it

on the top road out of Harrogate – once

with the head, then six times with the krooklock

in the face – and didn’t even swerve.

I dropped it into third

Egotistical – no remorse and no excuses

Boastful and confident – narrator has a casual attitude

to violence emphasised byhis casual conversational style

Enjambment – no punctuation at the end of lines or verses like

conversational speech or as if it’s histhoughts said out loud.

Here it is part of his boast and being proud of what he did

Takes his anger out on the hitcher –

envies him

and leant across

to let him out, and saw him in the mirror

bouncing off the kerb, then disappearing down the verge.

We were the same age, give or take a week.

He’d said he liked the breeze

Stark and violent images

Similarities – bothsame age and both

hitched. Could have been anyone.Echoes of hippy’s words

to run its fingers

through his hair. It was twelve noon.

The outlook for the day was moderate to fair.

Stitch that, I remember thinking,

you can walk from there.

Still the hippy’s words.Personification of breeze emphasises

hippy’s attitude.

Change of attitude-Very matter of

fact!

Back to theunimportant things

and a return tonormality.

More conversational clichés.