The Purpose Of Inner Conflict In Tony Harrison's V?

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Register to read the introduction… “Luke Spencer praises Harrison’s ‘uncompromising intervention in the politics of the 1980s’ and notes the poem’s ‘willingness to take risks in dramatizing a cultural crisis and imagining its solution”4 The skinheads are the result of these chaotic, faulty political and sociological failures. The skinheads are the victims of an industrial society who deprives its members of equal opportunities of an economical development. They are the representative of the working class and a failed economical system to provide employment opportunities. Since the Thatcher project failed to protect the working class and resulted in a class struggle, Harrison‘s V is the versus against all this mistreatment of the poor and unprotected people in the industry. Harrison cannot ignore his origins; he belonged once to the working class and now as an intellectual is voicing his disapproval by symbolism of the skinhead as a faulty product of Thatcherism, and a capitalistic society. Harrison ‘s V can be seen as a description of an unpleasant social reality: Class v. class as bitter as before. The poet expresses his condemnation towards this social dichotomy. Consequently the poet and skinhead’s conflict is a significant symbol of these disunities that make the poet outburst in creating …show more content…
The opponent linguistic styles that Harrison uses to form the dialogue between skinhead and the poet give the reader a deeper view about their backgrounds and origins. Although one can argue that Harrison ‘s origins are not from an upper class, still at the particular moment that he applies his critic against the uneducated and illiterate skinhead he is detached from that person who could articulate in the past. Consequently we can again understand why Harrison has this problematic reception of his own identity as an intellectual middle class individual. It is another clash of who he was and who he became. The fact that he himself he also sprays on the grave is a peak point that conveys multiple meanings. Firstly it shows Harrison‘s compromise with his past, a past that could easily host a touch of a skinhead within him. Surely, we must make a clear distinction that the skinhead who exists in the poet does not share every feature with the him but only the desire to voice his disappointment to the social inequalities, to call the common opinion for understanding the unfair situation and to invite for union using the dual layers of his identity: a working class and an intellectual poet. Some critics argue that the poet acknowledges the skinhead in him as a faulty part of his personality, however towards the end of the poem all these “UNITED” significations are

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