A* Analysis
In 'Kid' and 'True North', how does Armitage deal with
the theme of identity?
In 'Kid' and 'True North' Armitage plays with the theme of
identity. In 'Kid', he uses the extended metaphor of the
Batman/Robin relationship to show the theme of coming of
age, whereas in 'True North', he returns home - and deals with
the issue of the dual yet separate identities of the Falkland
Islands / Malvinas.
'Kid' uses iambic pentameter with a strong rhyme scheme and
fast, punchy rhythm to create the feel of 'Robin's' upbeat,
almost aggressive voice - as if he's asserting his identity
against the 'Batman' character. This is symbolic of coming of
age, and Armitage uses the pop-culture reference with further
colloquial expressions - like punning news headlines
screaming for attention: 'Holy robin-redbreast nest egg
shocker!' The alliteration (robin redbreast/roll), news phrases
and colloquial expressions tangle, violently, adding a fierce,
coiled energy: 'Holy roll me over in the clover' is almost a
tongue twister, with the assonance (holy/roll/over) and
internal rhyme (over/clover) making it hard to make sense of.
We feel the force of Robin’s energy straining to break free.
The narrator uses cliched, unoriginal phrases to assert his
own, unique identity: as if trying to force his way out of the
cliche of the sidekick. In the end, he re-frames Batman,
iconoclastically as 'stewing over chicken giblets' in the
'pressure cooker' - with the dual meaning of literal 'pressure',
as if Batman has broken down with the force of this 'new boy
wonder'.
In ‘True North’, Armitage seems to be writing in his own
person, in a calm, regularly structured piece that also uses
iambic pentameter, but here, the mood is gentler - far more
like normal conversation or telling a story than the rising
hysteria of Robin’s voice in ‘Kid’. This poem is unrhymed,
which adds to the more relaxed feel. Phrases like ‘bummed
ride’ and ‘not much to crow about’ feel like someone at home
in their own language - and their own identity - unlike the
straining energy of Robin’s diction.
The beginning of ‘True North’ describes the journey in
matter-of-fact terms, linking to Armitage’s Northern heritage
(Yorkshire, Marsden) of plain language, and unglamorous
‘cold’ ‘iced over’ and the loneliness of the setting in
‘unmanned’ stations. This suggests a cold welcome, as if he’s
not totally at ease. He seems to find it smaller, suggesting he
feels he has grown, describing the place as looking ‘stopped’
a mere ‘clutch of houses’ in a ‘toy snow storm’ - seeing it
from a distance suggests he reconnects with his roots
uncomfortably, seeing the smallness of it, separated. This
theme of disconnection appears in the final stanza when he
describes a ‘lecture’ - as if he’s an academic talking at people
in a non-conversational way: when he’s with people in the
pub - as if he no longer connects. In the final image, of
‘wolves’ and wounds (‘heals over’), he suggests a cold
viciousness, of heartlessness - and the ‘Gulf’ is the yawning
gap that now separates him from his original home, and the
people in it. His politics are unlike theirs - he will get ‘asked
outside’ (to fight) for saying ‘Malvinas’ (the Argentinian
name for the Falkland Islands) ‘in the wrong place’. This last
image of ‘the wrong place’ describes his home, as if it is now
‘wrong’ - showing his sense of dislocation that has come with
his changing poltics and sense of self.
Initially, Armitage goes home, in ‘True North’ thinking
himself a hero ‘half expecting / flags or bunting’, and indeed
the ‘drinks were on them’. However this later changes when
he’s asked to fight. His fame is frail - and he hosts a game of
burning through a tissue - to ‘dimp burning cigs’ - an
unglamorous, childish pastime, of crossing through (the
tissue) perhaps symbolic of the wanton destruction of crossing
to the other side - (of Argentina vs the UK), mixing educated
elegant words like ‘diaphragm’ deliberately with the
colloquial baseness of ‘dimp’ and ‘cigs’ - to show that the two
sides to his personality mix uneasily. His ‘guests’ ‘yawned
their heads off’ when he talked, showing that from their point
of view his new identity makes no sense - is uninteresting.
In ‘Kid’, we see a similar discomfort between the popular
view of Batman’s identity as superhero and the sordid truth.
This suggests the fallibility of adults revealed as children
grow up: that our heroes are more than we thought, and that
the world is not so black and white. Armitage uses colloquial
expressions ‘scotched’ the ‘rumour’, ‘let the cat out’ and
‘blown the cover’. The truth of ‘a married woman’ taken out
‘on expenses’ is sordid, and brings Batman to ‘next to
nothing’ at the end of the poem, as if he’s fallen from grace.
Robin re-presents Batman’s ‘order’ to ‘let me loose’ ‘freely’
to ‘wander’ as ‘or ditched me, rather’, stripping back fine
words to reveal the unpleasant truth (from his point of view) showing multiple interpretations of the same event.
In conclusion, Robin asserts himself violently in ‘Kid’, just as
Armitage forgets home has become ‘the wrong place’ to say
Malvinas. Armitage is aware he doesn’t quite belong, that a
‘Gulf’ has opened up, but gives a hopeful image at the end of
it ‘healed’. In contrast, Robin asserts himself over Batman, as
if he must overwrite him - the two versions of the truth can’t
co-exist, the follower with the leader: Robin, now must be
‘the real boy wonder’, now he’s ‘taller, harder; stronger,
older’. The list of comparatives suggest he only sees his
identity in relation to Batman, and even in the end, doesn’t
quite succeed in escaping the cliched phrase.