Text 3 – The Sweet Menu
by Jeremy Hughes
Lesson Objective:
To explore the poet’s feelings and
attitudes
Creative writing
• Imagine you are in a busy restaurant; happy
couples and families everywhere; yet you are
alone. Write a FIRST PERSON account of how
this feels.
– What you see around you
– How this makes you feel
The Sweet Menu
• The narrator describes eating in a restaurant
on his own
• The poem is written in couplets – until the
final stanza where the one line is isolated –
this could represent how all restaurants cater
for couples and not single people
• He feels even more alone and isolated by
eating in a crowded, busy restaurant
Key Literary Terms
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Symbolism
Metaphor
Irony
Tone
Pun
Choosing what to write about
• Avoid feature spotting
• This is a big problem in the exam
• Students like to show off their knowledge of the
literary and linguistic terminology
• It won’t get you credit if all you say is ‘the poet
uses metaphors, similes, irony and tone to create
a sad poem...’
• Take time on each individual technique
• Pick out the MOST RELEVANT
• You DON’T need to talk about EVERYTHING!!
With that in mind...
– The writer uses symbolism
– The empty chair which is ‘pulled back as if someone
will come’ symbolises his feelings of isolation
– The fact that it is empty illustrates that firstly,
restaurants cater for couples rather than single
people, and secondly, it emphasises his feelings of
being alone. The fact that it is pulled back presumably
by the waitress ‘as if someone will come’ illustrates
society’s expectations of eating in a restaurant; it is
something to be done as a group rather than on your
own.
Now you have a go
• Choose one of the following techniques to
expand on:
– Pun ‘it hasn’t come to much’
– The dancing Metaphors
– Structure (couplets with one single last line)
– The irregularity of the line lengths and lack of
rhyme pattern
– The flower