Compare and contrast the ways in which poets have used individual experiences to present the them the theme of conflict in the 2 poems OOTB and Futility

OOTB

Armitage conveys conflict in this poem by using an individual experience ‘You have picked me out’. The word ‘me’ tells us that the narrator of the poem is the person burning in the building. He does this because he wanted to give all the people who died in the 9/11 bombings a voice. He says ‘you have picked me out’ as he wants to be noticed and be saved from the burning wreck that he is unfortunately stuck in.

The Falling LeavesCole conveys conflict in this poem by using an individual experience ‘They fell like snowflakes wiping out the noon’. ‘Snowflakes’ represents the soldiers in the war and they fell to the ground as if dying peacefully because when they die they cannot fell anything. Snowflakes are individual and unique and 2 are never the same. This creates the image of millions if unique helpless people dying without need.

OOTB & The Falling Leaves

They’re similar because they’re both about conflict and have individual experiences in them. The difference is that in OOTB it is focused on one person and in The Falling Leaves Cole talks about all of the soldiers that passed away in the war. In OOTB an image is already created in your head as you are reading about it but in The Falling Leaves the actual meaning of the poem is hidden and you have to read between the lines to find the actual meaning.