Essay comparing Dunmore's 'To My Nine-Year-Old Self' and Barber's 'Material'
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Course
Unit 3 - Poetry
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
An essay comparing the theme of journey through life in the two poems from the Poems of the Decade anthology: Dumore's 'To My Nine-Year-Old Self' and Barber's 'Material'. Written by a current university student that achieved an A* in English Literature A level by memorising these essays which are s...
Essay Plan: Compare the ways in which journey through life is presented in ‘To My Nine-
Year-Old Self’ by Helen Dunmore and one other poem.
Introduction:
An immediate point of comparison between Helen Dunmore’s ‘To my Nine-Year-Old
Self’ and Ross Barber’s ‘Material’ is that they both explore the theme of journey
through life.
‘To my Nine-Year-Old Self’ takes the form of a dramatic monologue in which the
poet reminisces about her journey through life in the first-person to present her
readers with a fictionalised situation in which she imagines that she encounters her
past self at the age of nine.
Meanwhile, the central theme of ‘Material’ is a nostalgia and remembrance for the
things society has lost during the speaker’s journey through life.
Point one (To my Nine-Year-Old Self):
From the outset of ‘To my Nine-Year-Old Self,’ Dunmore presents the speaker
reflecting on her journey through life by imagining her past self who seems to be
fully immersed in the world of childhood.
The poem opens in quite a startling way: “You must forgive me. Don’t look so
surprised.”
Straight away we get a sense of the adult’s spoken voice as she seems almost to
intrude on a child’s carefree world in which the child is happy to take risks, as the
child might be discovered “balancing on [her] hands or on a tightrope.”
As the adult, the speaker laments her childhood carelessness: “I have spoiled this
body we once shared” and is now risk averse: “careful of a bad back or a bruised
foot.”
The speaker’s fragility in adulthood is juxtaposed with her past agility in childhood,
creating an air of nostalgia for what she has lost in her journey through life.
Point two:
Similarly, the opening section of ‘Material’ conveys a sense of nostalgia the speaker
is feeling for the way society has changed during her journey through life.
The dual meaning of title of the poem, “Material,” signifies both a material fabric
and the material that Barber draws upon as a source of inspiration for her poem.
The poem focuses on Barber’s own mother and the spirit of the age she embodied.
Barber coins her “the hanky queen” to emblematically represent a source of comfort
in a more solid and certain world than the one that we live in today that has
materially changed since the passing of her mother.
The soft and comforting handkerchiefs of the past are ultimately juxtaposed against
the “scratchy and disposable” paper tissue which is a symbol of modern life and its
uncomfortable realities and transitory nature.
Point three:
Likewise, the idea of the early stages of the speaker’s journey through life being a
place of optimism and possibility is also evoked in Dunmore’s poem where a day
stretching ahead of the child is seen metaphorically to be like a sheet of “white
paper” waiting to be written on.
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