This post will be updated regularly over the next two weeks. As you write the final draft of your 1000 word essay make sure you check for updates.
updated 9 December
Reading through these draft essays it's clear some of you have not read my notes posted to the teaching blog about this essay. I've tried to help you with these posts. Use them.
Make sure you comment on the form of Hughes poetry in Birthday Letters. refer to the genre of autobiography, the combination of narrative - story telling, descriptive writing and reflective writing. Comment on the genre of letters. What is the purpose of letter writing? What might these letters be trying to say to Plath? Who is the audience - fictional and literal? Make sure you refer to free verse, the mixture of registers - informal and colloquial language that may be consistent to letter writing to someone the writer knows, combined with the more formal lexis consistent to a more literary or elevated audience - us.
You absolutely must refer to the collection in the introduction and refer to at least one or two other poems studied - show how they are similar or different. It's important that you show you have studied more than one poem from the collection.
Make the different paragraphs link to each other so that it actually reads like an essay rather than a series of stand alone paragraphs all stuffed together in any order.
Make sure before you use a quotation you must put the quotation in context. Otherwise the quote does not really make much sense. It's your opportunity to show you understand the poem.
All your comments and observations must be focused on the poem not the relationship between Hughes and Plath. You are writing an essay about Hughes writing style and the theme referred to in the essay question. You must keep these in mind as you edit your essay.
Some brief comments on You Hated Spain
You must really know this poem a lot better than you do.
Use every relevant quotation to analyse in relation to your title essay title.
From the poem 'You Hated Spain' the line,'The wrought-iron grille, death and the Arab drum', you should refer to the list of three, the phrases refer to grille - ventilation but seen as a prison? 'death' can be associated with The Peninsular War of 1807-1814, the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, World War II 1939-1945, and the brutal Spanish dictator, 1939 - 1975. This list of three are impressions of Spain - snap shots if you like - that suggest its history and influence.
I think Spanish attitudes towards death are different from those of western Europe.The dead are celebrated welcomed in to people's homes where an alter like structure is created with photographs, mementos, food and drink - that were enjoyed by the dead person - are put on display. These celebrations are called The Day of the Dead.
I think Spain was a place that exposed her mental insecurities. It was a place where her mental problems became obvious. She could hide these in America. But not here. Only with leaving Spain could she begin to feel at ease again.
