A Short Critical Analysis On 'book Ends' By Tony Harrison 4d1r52

‘Book Ends’ by Tony Harrison is about how the death the poet’s mother and how this affected his relationship between himself and his father. Harrison utilises various lexical techniques in conveying his sentiments, thoughts and memories. With the exception of the third stanza, the poem is told from the first person narrative. The plural pronouns, ‘we’ and ‘us’ are indicators of this. The poem uses an implied author because of the overt nature of the commentary. ‘At night you need my company to ’ The possessive adjective, ‘my’ highlights the involvement of the narrator. The pronoun ‘you’ refers to the second person; the poet is directing his feelings to his father. The poem infers that the setting of the events taking place is in the family home. Specifically around the fireplace. The italicised third stanza is free and indirect speech from the mother:

‘You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say, Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare...’

There are no speech marks to indicate the voice of this character. This is because Harrison does not want the mother to have a speaking role, as she is no longer present in his life.

The of the poem uses an informal mode of discourse. The constant uses of contractions such as ‘don’t’, ‘you’re’ and ‘what’s’ underline this. This is to keep the tone conversational and to reinforce the iambic rhythm each line possesses, such as:

‘We could never talk much, and now don’t try’

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This sentence would lose the rising and falling phonemes and keeps tone the of the working class Yorkshire dialect. This sentence also includes a serial comma. This technique separates the sentence splitting between reflecting on the past and the present. Of course, this also subtlety acknowledges that author is a man of education.

‘The ‘scholar’, me, you, worn out on poor pay’

The father is also not well educated as we learn in this age. This may explain the informal nature of the poem and why the decision to use an alternate rhyming scheme, the father may find the poem easier to understand.

The use of quotation marks for the word ‘scholar’ means that the term is used with a little irreverence. The narrator is perhaps only a ‘scholar’ in comparison to his dad. This marks a distinct class difference. The phrase ‘worn out on poor pay’ is a north of England vernacular, a deviation from Standard English. The repetition of ‘books, books, books’ dramatically emphasises this point as well as simultaneously expressing his vice for dealing with the silence around the fireplace.

Although the reader can tell that the narrator is ing the events from the present day, the retrospection follows a non-linear time line. The beginning starts with the day the mother died:

‘Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead We chew it slowly that last apple pie.’

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The juxtaposition of the tragedy with eating the final desert is reinforced with the choice of enjambment. The use of ‘we’ gives the sentence immediacy and the sense of togetherness which is strained throughout the remainder of the poem.

The second couplet is reflecting on the aftermath of the tragedy; the third a comment on the perspective of the central woman when she was alive. From the chronology of his reminiscence, this is the earliest point. The following stanzas are observations which have occurred after the mother’s death. Harrison gives the reader further insight in the last verse/ This troubled relationship with his father has lasted approximately thirty years, which highlights the serious depth of the problem.

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