Summary of Nettles by Vernon Scannell

Reading Record: Nettles
Main ideas/Message/Feelings/Attitudes:
The poem ‘Nettles’ is a poem that explores the relationship between a father and his son, taking that into account, I feel that the audience that this poem is aimed at are parents because, parents would be the only people who would be able to relate to the perspective that the narrator is seeing things from, since only a parent would be able to comprehend the agitation the narrator feels when he finds out that his son has been hurt. In the poem 'Nettles', Vernon Scannell takes something that could be pondered as a simple yet common occurrence, and with some deep thinking about its implications, arrives at an insight into what could be outweighed as a serious problem mankind has to face, suffering at the hands of war.

Structure/Shape of the poem/Form:
The poem ‘Nettles’ is only made up of one 16 line long stanza, Scannell could have intentionally done this so to symbolise how long a parent has a bond with their child: until the age of 16. Possible reasons as to why Scannell chose to make it this long could be because, after the age of 16, children tend to break away from their family due to the fact that they themselves are becoming adults and could possibly be having thoughts of starting a family of their own.

Scannell has given the poem a rhyme scheme which has a ‘AB AB CD CD’ pattern which is used throughout the poem. By doing this, Scannell could have been attempting to spark the thought of soldiers marching into our heads because, when soldiers are marching they are in complete sync and are able to maintain this synchronisation without even being one second behind the rest. Furthermore, Scannell has used an iambic pentameter on every single line of the poem. This use of the iambic pentameter is able to maintain this whole army idea because, by being able to maintain this 10 syllable limit per line, Scannell is able to convey this ordered idea which is often used in the army.   The...