The Speaker as a Character: Study Guide (English Literature 2.1)

A poem has a voice, and the voice is a character

In a short story a narrator tells us about characters. In many poems there is no narrator standing outside: there is a speaker, the voice that says the poem. The speaker may talk to someone, think aloud, remember, describe or argue. As with a narrator, the speaker is not necessarily the poet. The writer creates a voice, perhaps close to their own, perhaps very far from it. Your task is to read what the lines reveal about that voice.

This makes the speaker a kind of character. Characters reveal their perspectives and biases through:

• the words they use,
• the details they provide,
• the organisation of their thinking (what they say first, what they return to, what they correct),
• the decisions they report, and
• the actions they take.

All five apply to poems. A speaker who says “I do not complain of three” has made a decision about what to complain of; a speaker who starts a sentence and breaks off has shown you the order in which their thoughts arrive.

Four questions for any speaker

1. Who is speaking? What can you infer about the speaker from details (age, situation, relationship, background)?
2. To whom? The addressee shapes the speech. A speaker who talks politely to a stranger may be hiding a stronger feeling.
3. When and why? What is the occasion (a departure, a return, a quarrel, a memory) and what does the speaker want?
4. How? What is the tone, and which words, repetitions, corrections or omissions show it?

Evidence of perspective in a speaker’s language

Feature	What to notice	What it can reveal
Word choice	Which words the speaker picks, and which they avoid	Attitude, values, social position
Repetition	Words or structures repeated	What the speaker cannot stop thinking about
Self-correction	“no, nothing will be wrong”	What the speaker fears and hides
Omission	What is not said	Reluctance, politeness, denial
Address	“You”, “Dear Sir”	Relationship and power
Detail	What the speaker chooses to notice	What matters to them

Worked example 1: a speaker in a public-domain poem

William Blake’s “London”, from Songs of Experience (1794), begins (text as in the Project Gutenberg edition; spelling and punctuation differ between editions):

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

Step 1: Who is speaking? A first-person speaker who “wander[s]” through the city and “meet[s]” faces. The verbs suggest a walker, an observer without a fixed place in the scene.

Step 2: To whom? There is no named addressee; the speaker is reporting to the reader, or thinking aloud.

Step 3: What do the details reveal?

• “chartered” is used twice, of the street and of the river. A charter is a legal document that grants or controls rights. Applying it to a street and a river suggests that even the natural and the public are owned or regulated.
• “A mark in every face I meet, / Marks of weakness, marks of woe”: the repeated “mark” and “every” show a speaker who sees the same signs of suffering wherever he looks. The speaker does not select; the pattern is relentless.
• “every cry of every man, / In every infant’s cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban”: the repeated “every” in each line drives the point that suffering is universal in this city.
• “The mind-forged manacles I hear”: the speaker hears something that is not a physical sound. “Mind-forged” suggests that the bonds are created by the mind, by attitudes people accept, and “manacles” are chains. The sense of hearing makes the idea immediate.

Step 4: State the speaker’s perspective. The speaker sees the city as a place of universal, self-imposed or institutionally imposed suffering. He is an attentive, troubled observer who cannot look at a face without seeing distress.

Model sentence: “The speaker’s repetition of ‘every’ and ‘mark’ presents a mind that cannot stop noticing suffering, and the phrase ‘mind-forged manacles’ shows a perspective in which people are held less by physical chains than by what they have come to accept.”

Notice that the model refers to “the speaker”, not Blake, and rests on named words.

Worked example 2: a speaker who gives herself away (original poem, written by Marlbridge)

Instructions for the Neighbour

You’ll find the key beneath the blue glazed pot.
Water the ferns on Tuesdays, not the cactus.
The cat is called Admiral, and he will lie
about his dinner. Feed him once. Not twice.
I would ask more, but you have your own life,
and I am only going for a week. Or so
the ticket says. If anything is wrong
no, nothing will be wrong. Just the ferns.

Step 1: Who is speaking, and to whom? A person about to leave home, speaking to a neighbour. The imperatives (“Water”, “Feed”) give instructions, but the register is friendly and brisk.

Step 2: What does the speaker’s tone seem to be? Practical and controlled on the surface. The details are ordinary and precise (a blue glazed pot, Tuesdays, the cat’s name).

Step 3: Where does the surface slip? Three moments.

• “I would ask more, but you have your own life”: the speaker apologises in advance for a request not yet made, which suggests she expects the neighbour to be asked for more than the poem says.
• “I am only going for a week. Or so / the ticket says”: the correction “Or so the ticket says” hands the certainty to a piece of paper and so reveals doubt.
• “If anything is wrong / no, nothing will be wrong”: she starts a worst-case sentence and cuts it off. The line break after “wrong” and the missing punctuation let the unfinished thought show through.

Step 4: What do the choices reveal? The final line, “Just the ferns”, reduces everything to the smallest task, as if saying it small will keep it small. Her organisation of thought moves from detailed instruction (which she controls) to an admission of fear that she cannot finish.

Step 5: State the claim. The speaker covers anxiety about the trip with a list of small tasks. The details she chooses (the key, the ferns, the cat) are the things she can manage, while what she cannot manage (whether she will return) comes out only in a broken sentence.

Model paragraph opening: “The speaker of ‘Instructions for the Neighbour’ uses a brisk list of chores to contain a fear she cannot name. Her correction ‘Or so / the ticket says’ admits doubt about her return, and the unfinished ‘If anything is wrong’ followed by ‘no, nothing will be wrong’ shows her stopping herself before the worst thought is spoken.”

Strong and weak statements about a speaker

Weak	Why it is weak	Stronger
“The poet is worried about going away.”	Treats the speaker as the poet; no evidence	“The speaker’s self-correction (‘no, nothing will be wrong’) shows that she is worried.”
“The speaker is polite.”	A label with no evidence	“The speaker’s apology before asking (‘I would ask more, but you have your own life’) shows politeness covering need.”
“The speaker lists things to do.”	Summary only	“The list of small tasks lets the speaker keep control of what she can manage.”

Common misconceptions

• “The speaker is the poet.” A poem’s “I” is a voice, and you cannot assume the lines record the poet’s life. Argue from the poem.
• “If there is no ‘I’, there is no speaker.” Every poem has a voice. A poem without “I” still has someone who notices, selects and judges.
• “The speaker always means what they say.” A speaker can hide, correct, exaggerate or contradict themselves, and the gap is often the point.
• “Tone is a single word.” Tone can change within a poem. Name the tone and, where it shifts, say where.
• “Only the content matters.” How the speaker organises thought (repetition, breaks, corrections) is evidence too.
• “Speaker and addressee are the same.” The addressee is the one spoken to. Check who “you” is.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then use the checklist and revision notes. The next topic, The structure of a poem, looks at how lines and stanzas arrange the speaker’s thought. For the prose parallel, see Narrator and point of view. In Unit 5 and Unit 8 the same skills return in more demanding poems.