Compare Glory Glory Be to Chocolate
Compare and analyse ‘Glory Glory Be to Chocolate’ and ‘The Butcher’s Shop’ and how they represent the ideas/attitudes/feelings about food. In ‘Glory Glory Be to Chocolate’, John Agard emphasises the marvellous and remarkable feelings the author has towards chocolate. He exaggerates his attitudes on how he feels food should be spoken about, as he constantly repeats religious references such as ‘manifestations’. Using the lexis from the semantic field of religion is useful for the author to strain his response on how chocolate tastes so good.
The lexis ‘manifestations’ is a metaphor in the text that portrays that the chocolate has embodied god, showing the Agard’s feelings that chocolate is that powerful to him. Also he wants to share it with the audience by using influential words to hypnotise the reader by appealing to their senses. For example in the citation ‘mouth-watering bars… that ring the tastebud bells’, Agard lures human senses into making them create an image of the ‘butterscotch and caramel’ chocolate that seems so pleasurable, which is one of the aims of John Agard’s; to make people want to appreciate food like he does.
However, ‘The Butcher’s Shop’ gives a very negative perspective towards food as Angela Topping uses negative connotations to reveal her ideas and attitudes towards food. Topping explains the darkness in the butcher shop, making the reader imagine them being in the butcher shop witnessing the killing of the innocent animals. The events of the butcher shop illustrate the horrifying truth of what happens to animals instead of the fake stories that children are told in books.
Throughout the poem, the author constantly uses a political under tones to give her opinion on the political party which she disagrees with, such as ‘their porky heads voting Tory all their lives their blue rosettes discarded now. ’ Topping uses the lexis ‘Tory’ in a negative way, as she tries to give her own opinion on the party, as she is anti tory and is saying the butcher is Tory and doesn’t want change. The butcher doesn’t want change as he likes the way things are going and that animals are killed for slaughter, which makes the readers put the Tory party in a scandalous light.
Furthermore, the ‘blue rosettes’ symbolise the Tory party which mainly consist of upper class people but also are the colour rosettes that are given to the best animals at competitions, which is ironic as the animals that get murdered are not actually winners in the end, and their rosettes mean nothing now. At the end of the poem ‘Glory Glory Be to Chocolate’, the last line is on its own stanza, to emphasise the importance of the sentence. By making it significant, Agard asks the audience a simple rhetorical question; ‘the makes every mouth a god? She uses the straightforward lexis’ to question their views on if they think chocolate is ‘god-like’ which can create highly debatable conversations between people reading the poem. The use of the grammar also sums up the poem and gives the reader a clear choice as to whether they agree with his opinions of chocolate or disagree. By having ‘mouth a god’ in the sentence is a very strong term to have as it can create religious disagreements as some religions have more than one god and could create tension between some readers.
In ‘The Butcher’s Shop’, the poem doesn’t flow like ‘Glory Glory Be to Chocolate’ as it has abrupt feel to it throughout the novel with many sentences stopping halfway through and carrying on the next line. Topping uses enjambment through the poem to portray the continuous killings of the animals, and that meat is never ending no matter how much people protest against the butchery and consumption of meat. This is shown in the citation ‘open-mouthed dignified in martyrs’ death.
They hang stiff as Sunday manners. ’ In the poem, the stanzas are presented in different lengths, which could represent the different pigs hanging in the butchers shop. Plus, using the adjective ‘dignified’ is described in a sarcastic manner as the poet is saying the pigs are being killed for the greater good and using the term ‘Sunday manner’s exposes that its normal for people to have meat when having the traditional British Sunday dinner and that’s what the animals are killed for.
In conclusion, ‘Glory Glory Be to Chocolate’ uses religious references to portray Agards true passion towards chocolate and uses language devices to underline the prominence positive attitude food gives. While ‘The Butcher’s Shop’ gives a cruel feeling towards food, as Topping uses child imagery to demonstrate that there is no innocence in the butchery and that children’s stories are merely lies as to what happens to animals.
