How does Armitage use language to capture the emotional state of the narrator? Bitter and emotional, “Alaska” is a poem that perfectly captures the emotional stages of a break-up and the transition through it; moving from anger to betrayal to sadness and possibly even suicide.

Intro/Overview Bitter and emotional, “Alaska” is a poem that perfectly captures the emotional stages of a break-up and the transition through it; moving from anger to betrayal to sadness and possibly even suicide.

Paragraph One: Firstly, stanza one starts off with a short and blunt “so you upped and went. Big deal!” Here the narrator is clearly not bothered, the use of the stock phrase “upped and went” reinforcing just how normal and ordinary it seems to the narrator. But Armitage plays with the tone and the abruptness of “Big deal!” is almost infantile and childish in tone and suggests an air of defensiveness. The entire poem is brilliantly built on the foundation of Alaska as an extended metaphor with various geographical and natural features plotted throughout the poem and in stanza one, the narrator compares himself to the native Kodiak bear, a simile that conjures an image of something fierce and wild, angry almost. But is all this just hyperbolic defensiveness? Does the narrator protest too much? These ideas start to move the narrator towards a more confused emotional state, his hurt turning to anger, turning to pride and back again.

Paragraph Two: Secondly, stanza two and three show the narrator’s need to re-emphasise his independence, to show his pride, his ability to stand alone – to not need she who was very much needed. Colorful images bristling with sarcasm are presented; the bottle washer gone, the brand of a steam iron on my dress shirt. The tone here is again defensive and the bitterness is spat with an almost “I’ll show you” resentment. The narrator clearly thinking at this point that he’s better off. But again, it’s over-blown, hyperbolic littered with images of misogynistic domestication, “ring pulls and beer cans”, coupled with references to the “kitchen” show a lack of emotional depth and intelligence, possibly a reason for the end of the relationship.

Paragraph Three: Thirdly, the poem then suddenly slips into a feeling of tenderness, sadness. The narrator almost seems vulnerable. “The only time I came within a mile of missing you…” It’s a strange admission that doesn’t follow what’s gone before it. It’s packaged as anger but what follows shows an insecurity as Armitage continues the imagery and metaphor of Alaska with comical associations between fishing and sex; “hauling in the sheets, trying to handle that big king-sizer”. There’s a feeling of jealousy here, of being left out, abandoned. But the extended metaphor of Alaska continues to show the narrator’s inability to deal with the break-up. The brief and strange references to Alaska are reminiscent of a GCSE geography students who’s just learned a random details and is trying unsuccessfully to draw comparisons between his relationship and Alaska. Armitage’s clever word choices here show the narrator to be very childlike and immature in his manner, showing a failure to deal with the relationship and it’s break-up.

Paragraph Four: The tone then continues a downward spiral as the poet uses a three beat line to show just how distant and isolated the narrator has become; “you and him”, “hand in hand”, “his and hers”. The repetition of the rhythm here makes it seem almost mournful, the anger is fading and being replaced by a surge of forlorn sadness and regret. “All this under my nose” briefly suggests betrayal or could also suggest a sense of self-loathing or admission of defeat as if the narrator should have known and was too easily fooled.

Paragraph Five: The last line again jumps to another irrelevant Alaskan geographical feature. The reference to the Bering Strait being just “a stone’s throw away” evokes a number of different images and ideas. Again it re-enforces the idea of being isolated, frozen, cold and alone but it may also emphasise a sense of the narrator’s despair, standing on the cliff top, overlooking the sea, shouting and venting his anger into the wind and plume of the sea. Armitage leaves the ending vague, possibly not wishing to completely darken the mood, but here the Alaskan reference is more forceful and serious. Maybe he’s leaving Alaska behind, moving on from his teenage crush, possibly hoping to mature, or the reader maybe left feeling that the narrator has no other option and is being forced to contemplate a life without his love, a life he can no longer bare to live.