"True North" by Simon Armitage - Kid (1992)

Résumé du document

True north is a poem written by Simon Armitage and published in the book Kid. Kid is a collection of poems published in 1992. Simon Armitage is a famous British poet, playwright and novelist born in 1963 in Marsden, in Northern England. The North is a central theme in Simon Armitage's work. For that matter, he published a memoir in 2009 entitled All Point North. In the poem "True North", Simon Armitage deals with how going away from home can change who you are. To do so, he tells the story of the first time he came back from his school in Portsmouth, in the south of England. The poem deals with the speaker struggling to find his identity and figuring out where he belongs after having been at Polytechnic school. Indeed, the speaker returns home, ready to tell his university education, and against all odds, realizes that nobody really cares about him.

So as to analyze this poem, we will first try to explain how the poem describes the speaker as a young man who has a high opinion of himself. Then, we will put the emphasis on the actual situation, which is that he has to be himself to be accepted by his community. Finally, we will try to comment on the consciousness raising of the speaker, when he realizes where he truly belongs.

Extraits

[...] A know-it-all student who has a high opinion of himself It is the first time that the speaker gets back home since he left for university: “hitching home for the first time” (line 1). The first stanza provides us an aspect of his personality. In point of fact, with all his intellectual baggage, the speaker thinks that everyone is waiting for him. He considers himself as a kind of a hero coming back from his mission and waiting for applauses and adulation. [...]

[...] The speaker is not on the right side and lost touch with the rest of his community. It seems like his community has rejected the man he has become, since he forgot about all the values that once kept them together. Back to the North, back to reality If we make a closer look to the title, we can say that “True North” may have another meaning apart from the fact that it refers to a geographical term. In fact, there is an implicit meaning, which is that the word echoes to the word Indeed, his village, located in northern England, is his life's reality. [...]

[...] We can see that in the third stanza: «half expecting flags or bunting, a ticker-tape welcome, a fanfare or a civic reception (line 10-11-12). As a matter of fact, he believes that he deserves a great welcoming as if he had achieved something impressive. This idea can be highlighted by the fact that one of the first impressions we have through the poem is the notion of immobilism. Indeed, in the second stanza, we can read that the village looks like toy snow-storm with the dust settled" (line which means that it seems old and untouched, as if nothing has happened nor changed without him. [...]

[...] We can pursue this idea by the use of the term “lecture” (line 25). As a matter of fact, the speaker believes that he is superior to them; he thinks that what he is teaching them is of great value since usually, this term is used to designate an exposition for the purpose of instruction. The speaker starts to realize that he may have changed in the wrong way . Who realizes he has to be himself to be accepted by his community. [...]

[...] In addition, the speaker refuses to see the truth about what he really is to people when it does not bother him to come back in his village in a simple “guard's (line 2). The “arm-wrestle” (line 14) between the South and the North is an intern fight that quickly ends for the speaker. His northern roots are much stronger than his southern weeds. He needs to reacquaint himself with local customs, get to know the people of his village better again and change his attitude towards them and as he says it in the final sentence of the poem “make the crossing when the gulf heals over” (line 28). [...]