Feedback on my English literature essay? (Year 13)

This essay got a C+ :( teachers notes “strong response, need more specific language analysis” Written under exam conditions, unseen poetry question.

Both poems “Growth” by Les Murray and “A minor role” by U.A Fanthorpe explore the existential responses of the narrators when faced by serious illness.

In the poem “A minor role” Fabthorpes use of reported speech give us an insight into the responses the narrator gives to the people in their life “O, getting in getting better” the repetition of the reported speech in italics highlight the social they must put on with the people around her, however this shifts in the last stanza where the reported speech is instead used as an inner monologue, “yet to my thinking this act was ill advised. It would have been better to die” this shift shows how the narrators true feelings of death and giving up, which they actually want to say to the people expecting British politeness as her “role” in society.

This frustration of being heard is also evident in “Growth” where the narrator “hiding from the grief” and the personified “dark” moves as they do, the industrial “bare house lights” and “no car lights” connotations of civilisation and other people, shifts to the light of the “stars” and “burnout streaks” the shift from artificial to natural light suggests a primal tone, were they are left alone within nature, which they will return to setting a feeling of dreaded mortality in the reader.

Furthermore in “A minor role” there is evidence of an absurdist response to serious illness within the narrator. The poem is written in free verse connoting the chaotic and unstructured life the narrator must lead, within the stanzas, an ample amount of cesura is used, the semi-colon in the third stanza starts a list of responsibilities the narrator must undertake. This brings into question the title of the poem “A minor role” this makes the reader question how insignificant their role is, despite the listing, giving the poem an absurdist element, more evidence is seen in the last stanza, the sharp short sentence “no it wouldn’t” and “I am here to make you believe in life” as a solution for her prior existential ideations, they chose absurdism and instills hope in the reader that they will live or their loved one will live. However, this hope is unclear in “Growth” after it is revealed that the narrator’s grandma died of cancer, the reported speech asks “did Emily have a growth?” The reader may now understand the title of the poem “growth” may be referring to the growth of a tumour which the man is punched for. It comes into question whether the taboo of cancer will seize, and not become hidden with shame or guilt, yet the question is left to the last time, making the reader question the ambiguous ending.

In “A minor role” the narrator feels they must perform for society, the consonance “these midget moments wrong, the monstrous fabric” connotes a sense of costuming for society “fabric” where they must put on a brave face they finds “monstrous” synonymous with unnatural and evil, this may also be referring to the fabric of society where it they get a small moment or interaction wrong, they will be reduced to unwanted gossip, which they criticise as “monstrous.” However in the poem “Growth” the narrator feels nostalgic over how society use to be “where a priest has just been cursed out of a morphine room” this juxtaposition of a “priest” an aid to spiritual help is replaced by the modern morphine, the room named after it, will see no room for the priest as he is “cursed” out juxtaposing the religious purity of a priest however this changed in the second last stanza where the news “comes down” connoting god, and the narrator belief in god, perhaps showing a sense of guilt “years later”