‘Hitcher’

1. ‘Hitcher’ By Simon Armitage

2. 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 simply got too much?

3. 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.

4. 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?

5. 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.)

6. Overall, the narrator is… Unreliable Unpredictable Self-centred Unstable Violent Callous Cynical And he cares nothing for other people’s fates.

7. First person narrator Cliché (stock phrase) 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. Why in italics? Is this the narrator’s justification? Narrator is materialistic ‘Hired’, ‘tired’, ‘fired’ all rhyme but do not all appear at end of lines so examples of internal rhyme

8. Romantic tone – hitcher has freedom, narrator wants. The hitcher Hippy has a relaxed and carefree attitude 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 Lyrics from a Bob Dylan song. The hippy peppers the conversation with fragments of pop culture. Narrator envies the lifestyle of the hippy and his outlook on life

9. Boastful and confident – narrator has a casual attitude to violence emphasised by his casual conversational style Egotistical – no remorse and no excuses 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 Enjambment – no punctuation at the end of lines or verses like conversational speech or as if it’s his thoughts 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

10. Stark and violent images 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 Similarities – both same age and both hitched. Could have been anyone. Echoes of hippy’s words

11. Still the hippy’s words. Personification of breeze emphasises hippy’s attitude. Change of attitude • Very matter of fact! 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. Back to the unimportant things and a return to normality. More conversational clichés.