Compare and contrast the ways in which Browning and Duffy present their main characters in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘War Photographer’
The two poem’s ‘War photographer’ and ‘Porphyria’s lover’ both tangle with the theme of death and complacency. The former represents the inner conflict felt inside a war photographer as he witnesses the horrors that he is forced to capture. The latter describes the gentle unwinding of a psychotic man who murders his wife. Both of these poem’s are centred around the thoughts of the protagonist. Browning and Duffy take different approaches into revealing and developing their protagonists in their poems’. It is interesting to investigate the different techniques and vocabulary they use in order to bring their ideas…show more content… The 4th line of each stanza is put there to stand out, ‘beers’, and I think this reflect the antagonists desperate plea to stand out himself. I think he is desperate to get recognition for being say the best war photographer. ‘They do not care’, this line represents that after all he’s done and what he’s seen, the people who he has taken do not remember or appreciate him, the only contact between them being in a single brisk click of the camera. He wants to somehow have an affect on these people, but this will undoubtedly never happen, staring down at his subjects from his aeroplane. The rhyme scheme in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ is ABABB for every 5 lines. The asymmetry and intensity of the pattern reflects the insanity concealed within the speaker’s reasoned self-presentation. Another significant factor when regarding the rhyme is that all but three end rhymes are masculine. Masculine rhyme occurs when the last syllable of two lines rhyme together like ‘still’ and ‘will’. A feminine rhyme however occurs when the last two syllables of two lines rhyme together, like ‘dissever’ and ‘forever’. The dominance of this masculine rhyme highlights the protagonists catastrophic conquest of