Comment on the use of metaphor in Simon Armitage’s poem ‘The Manhunt’ and the effect it has upon the reader.

In ‘The Manhunt’, in which a soldier’s wife describes her attempts to reconnect with her psychologically and physically damaged husband, Armitage regularly employs metaphors to convey the soldier’s fractured state. Indeed, the poem is itself an extended metaphor for the soldier’s body, exploring his face and chest until it reaches the ‘sweating, unexploded mine / buried deep in his mind’. By using the ‘mine’ as a metaphor for the soldier’s mental trauma, Armitage foregrounds the theme of war as a catastrophic force for individuals and their personal relationships. Moreover, the adjectives 'sweating' and 'unexploded' add additional layers of meaning : the former personifies the mine and conveys anxiety, whilst the latter suggests tension and urgency, making us aware that this 'mine' could detonate at any moment. The reader therefore becomes as desperate for the soldier's recovery as his wife, demonstrating the significant influence of metaphors in this poem.