Two hands

In the poem ‘Two Hands’ the writer is comparing his hands with his father’s hands; he’s not comparing them literally, although their hands are pretty similar ‘spade palms blunt fingers short in the joint’, but he’s actually comparing himself as a person with his father as a person.  He uses personification and metaphor to describe how his father takes out 13 operations in a day and yet sits up late to study even more ‘my father in his sits up late, a pencil nodding stiffly in the hand that 13 times between breakfast and supper led a scalpel an intricate dance.’  He contrasts this with himself who is a good writer but does nothing else other than that: ‘fingers with some style on paper, elsewhere none’. This contrast is effective because it shows how ‘hands so alike’, i.e. father and son, can be very different. He is also showing envious feelings towards his dads success and achievements; he is starting to see himself as useless as he has ‘saved no one, served no one’ whereas his father does this many times everyday. We can interpret that he wants his father to give him some attention as he seems to be putting all his effort into his work and putting his spare time towards his work therefore the relationship between the father and the son maybe isn’t so good.

Jon Stallworthy has used a rhyming scheme in his poem. His poem is set out in a that one line rhymes with the next line two lines down