‘Hitcher’
By Simon Armitage
What really annoys you?
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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?
Draw around each of the
stanzas. What shape do
they remind you of?
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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.
Dramatic monologue
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‘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?
themes
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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.)
Overall, the narrator is…
Unreliable
Self-centred
Violent
Callous
Cynical
Unpredictable
Unstable
And he cares nothing for other people’s fates.
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.
Narrator is
materialistic
Why in italics?
Is this the
narrator’s justification?
‘Hired’, ‘tired’, ‘fired’ all rhyme but do not all appear at end of lines so
examples of internal rhyme
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.
Lyrics from a Bob
The truth
Dylan song. The hippy
he said was blowin’ in the wind,
peppers the
conversation with
or round the next bend
fragments of pop
culture.
Narrator envies the lifestyle of
the hippy and his outlook on life
Egotistical – no remorse
and no excuses
Boastful and confident –
narrator has a casual attitude
to violence emphasised by
his casual conversational style
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
Takes his anger out
on the hitcher –
envies him
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
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
Echoes of hippy’s words
Similarities – both
same age and both
hitched. Could have been
anyone.
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.
More conversational clichés.
Back to the
unimportant things
and a return to
normality.