Essay on Brothers and Sister Maude Comparison

Words: 1301
Pages: 6

Brothers and Sister Maude comparison
Matthew Davis
Comparison between the range of emotions felt by the speaker in ‘Sister Maude’ and ‘Brothers’.

In Both ‘Sister Maude’ and ‘Brother’ a range of language devices are used in order to portray the different emotions and the varied relationships the poem focus on.

Both poems use structural elements in order to portray a certain effect on the reader and to make them feel certain emotions just based on the way the poems are structured. In ‘Sister Maude’ the enjambment between each of the lines emphasises the jealousy of ‘Maude’ herself and the continuation of the jealousy she undergoes for her sisters lover. The Rhyme scheme could also symbolise the continuation of the poem as the
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At first they have a close, unconditional love relationship; ‘saddled with you’. However this changed after the younger brother went home to get his bus fare off his mom as he ‘windmilled home’. This shows he was possibly skipping home and generally enjoying the company of his brother instead of his mom. The breakage of this happiness soon falls as he realises the bus has gone along with his older Brother as he ‘ran on, unable to close the distance I’d set in motion’. He was really eager to be with his brother and catch the bus but his brother went off without him; the relationship therefore breaking and the guilt feeling showing in his older brother.

The relationship within both poems varies throughout the poem as sometime there is a strong relationship but at other times; not so strong. In ‘Sister Maude’ the relationship at first was a strong one due to the fact they were sisters and you have unconditional love for sisters however as the poem continued the relationship came to a halt as Maude’s sister found her lover dead. The hatred then for her sister broke the relationship. We learn a lot from Maude, the main thing we learn is the spitefulness of her as she didn’t really think how it would affect her sister; she just thought how it would affect her as she can no longer be jealous of someone that’s dead. ‘Lurked to spy and peer’ shows how ‘perverted’ she