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The Hitcher- Simon Armitage

I am stuck on these three questions of Simon armitage- The hitcher

Can you please help me answer them.

1) Why do you think Simon Armitage wrote this poem? What do you think he was most interested in?

2) The hitch-hiker uses these expressions: ''following the sun to west from east'', ''the good earth for a bed'', truth ''was blowing in the wind''. what do these expressions tell us about him?

3) who do you think the man in the poem is speaking to? what do you think the suituation is?

Can anyone help me please!!
Reply 1
Kish
I am stuck on these three questions of Simon armitage- The hitcher

Can you please help me answer them.

1) Why do you think Simon Armitage wrote this poem? What do you think he was most interested in?

2) The hitch-hiker uses these expressions: ''following the sun to west from east'', ''the good earth for a bed'', truth ''was blowing in the wind''. what do these expressions tell us about him?

3) who do you think the man in the poem is speaking to? what do you think the suituation is?

Can anyone help me please!!


Question 1 is a hard question, we never did that at our school, but in my opinion i think Armitage is exploring how easy it is to get angry and do unthinkable things, hence him killing a hippy man! I think Simon Armitage wrote this poem to portray how vivid feelings can be in humans, and how humans can despair over anything. In this case the man driving the car was sacked, and this lead to him doing something totally out of the blue. I think the poem is symbolising how easy it is to make mistakes, and then to get revenge in some sort of way/method.

Question 2 ("him" do you mean the person who was killed?) if so, these expressions tell us that the man was at ease with nature, probably symbolising a tramp, who had hardly no possessions to his name. Following the sun from..is a way of directing one's self, and so this man was trying to get somewhere only with the help of the sun. "Blowing.." this is a song by a hippy man..LOL and so maybe that is symboliing the tramp is a hippy man. I think the "Blowing in the wind" is partially sarcastic in some form, as though Armitage is using it to explore how senile the killer is. (that's my opinion anyway!!) "The good earth for a bed", is a way of saying the man had no possessions and slept on the earth/ground, it may also be a way of forecasting things to come, as when the man is killed he will be back on that ground again, (you never know LOL).
As for the final question, i think the situation is like so, the man is fed u with his life, hence getting sacked, and so the man gets wound up, and becomes carefree of the world, he thinks he can do no right, and subsequently kills a hippy man for the fun of it, as though he wants to be in charge again, (or to play god), at the end of the poem the man seems to have a care in the world that he has just murdered somebody..and by saying "the outlook was moderate to fair" is a way of portraying this. He is very twisted, as he would rather think of the weather than his event..plus, he could have at least said stormy or something LOL
that's my impression of it..it may be wrong but i'm sure our teacher said something like this. Sorry for it being long, i'm trying to revise english at this moment, so it is heling me too!
Reply 2
For Question 2, another reason is that those quotes show the carefree nature of the hitchiker which completely contrasts the life of the guy who kills him. The driver is possibly jealous that he cannot have a carefree life like the hitchiker because he was too caught up in his job.