Comparison

In the exam, you will be required to write about several poems, some pre-1914 and some post-1914. To which poems would you compare Storm on the Island? There will be a number of ways in which the poems can be compared, and you may well be able to think of ones which we have not!

Poet and poem	What to look for in your comparison
Clarke: October	Both poems describe feelings of vulnerability triggered by aspects of the natural world. But Clarke is less interested in the actual effect of wind than its symbolic meaning - the windfall branch suggesting death, and the wind in the grass evoking her pen moving across the paper.
Hopkins: Inversnaid	Both poems use alliteration [alliteration: Words strung together with repeated (often initial) consonants, eg Max made many men mad. ] and assonance [assonance: Words that sound the same through the use of similar vowels or consonants, eg hot and slop or fold and filled. ] to enhance their detailed description of the natural world But in Hopkins' poem the wind is benign - 'A windpuff bonnet of fawn-froth' - not threatening like Heaney's wind.
Whitman: Patrolling Barnegat	Both are first person [first person: The 'I' or 'we' used by a narrator who is a participant in a narrative, in contrast to the third person 'he', 'she' or 'they' of a narrator who is not directly involved. ] descriptions of storms, and both use alliteration and assonance But while Heaney is indoors, protected against the storm, Whitman is outside in the midst of it.

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