'Unto Us...' Critical examination

I wrote this for my English class, my English teacher hasn't marked it yet so I wondered what some people thought of it. Please leave your thoughts and views, good or bad.

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'Unto Us...' is a moral based, emotive and thought provoking poem which puts across the always relevant issue of abortion. It was written by Spike Milligan, who was once a household name made famous by his controversial style of comedy. This poem shows that his poetry could be equally controversial. In this piece, I am going to examine the poetic techniques used by the poet, which make this poem so effective.

The piece takes the reader through the conception, the decision to have the child aborted. It goes through the process of the termination, and the 'aftermath'. Milligan writes the entire poem in the past tense as well as 1st person, this gives the sense of the embryo's soul lingering on in a bitter emptiness.

Milligan uses a wide range of techniques in this poem, and as they all successfully put across the poet's point of view, it has been difficult for me to hone in on the techniques that affected me the most. I shall examine and criticise the most effective techniques. The first of these is the use of direct speech, in lines 13-16, they read:

"Tho' I couldn't think

Each part of me was saying

A silent 'Wait for me

I will bring you love!' "

Through out the poem, the reader is shocked by the narrative. Direct speech adds to the initial shock because this small life has a voice. The line "Tho' I couldn't think", suggests a sense of instinct, because if one does or says anything without thinking about it, it can be called instinct. This makes one think that the embryo is alive. It has a soul. The reader may develop an attachment to the embryo after hearing it speak, they may empathize with it. There is a small connection between the direct speech and line 29:

"When my passing was told"

This is indirect speech, it made me feel the passing of the embryo because from line 16, it is built up and I looked at it as a life more and more until it has passed, at that point, the poem feels slightly emptier.

As the poem runs through, Milligan puts the embryo across as being vulnerable; this is most effective in one line.

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"I was taken

Blind, naked, defenceless"

Aside from techniques used to convey the vulnerability of the embryo, it is widely known that unborn children are vulnerable. Milligan simply (yet successfully) plays with this fact using it to his advantage. The second half of this quote has so many connotations. It suggests an attack of some kind, upon the embryo. This shows the poets moral grounds because it is made clear that this 'attack' is the abortion taking place. It can be said that Milligan uses preferred reading at this point. Using the nature of the poem and his language as one, the poet can use one of the two, in order to influence the readers view on the other. This is true as this technique successfully influenced me to understand what Milligan is saying when writing this.

Throughout the poem, emotion plays the largest part in creating the atmosphere. As it is written through the mind of the embryo, and so, it is the latter's emotions that are used as themes. To best show an example of this, I will quote two parts of the poem:

Line 6

"Lusting to live"

Lines 11 and 12

"I lived on trust

And love"

At the beginning of the piece, hope is the dominant theme, it then turns to anger. It is difficult to select the point at which this change occurs as anger is an underlying theme from the start, because, as previously mentioned, the entire piece is written in past tense. Perhaps the strongest, most effective part of the poem is the last two lines:

"Who was pretending to be a woman

Like my mother was."

Here irony is used, the irony is so bitter, that it could be called sardonic. The mother is condemned at this point, as she is being compared to a drag artist. Milligan is saying that the mother has every physical right to be a woman, but because of what she has done, aborting her child, shows that she should have no right to be called a woman. Personally, I myself found this to be the most effective part of the poem, for the reason being that, from the start, the anger that lasts throughout, is aimed at the father, and at first it is made to sound like the mother was reluctant to tell the father:

Lines 8 and 9

"Soon they knew of me

My mother - my father"

I interpreted the termination as being the father's idea. But, ultimately, the final choice is down to the mother, furthermore as the final line shows, the mother finally went through with the procedure and that is, in Milligan's opinion, immoral and unforgivable.

In conclusion, 'Unto Us...' by Spike Milligan is a poem that could influence a readers views on abortion. Simply because of all the poetic techniques that are used successfully to put across their point. For me the most effective techniques was the underlying theme of the emotions, because at times it could be the most obvious thing that was happening, and at other times is was particularly subtle, but the fact that it was always there, had a profound effect on me.