Compare the similarities and differences between two Ballads, Charlotte Dymond and John Lomas.
Charlotte Dymond and John Lomas, are two poems which share several techniques. They also, however are different in many ways. This essay will explore their similarities and their differences and explain reasons why the two ballads are different or similar. For example, both poems have a theme of murder. Ballads normally have a sad or shocking story, so this is very common. In both poems the murderer is always hanged after murdering another person. In Charlotte Dymond, the murderer is her lover. In John Lomas, the murderer is John Lomas. The murder controls the ballads and there is no point in the ballads which are happy, this means that the ballads can be quite depressing because they are so sad. John Lomas is quite sad because the murderer John Lomas is telling the story with a great amount of regret. In both poems a razor is used to kill the victim. Razors come out of a small wooden holder, so it would be easy to hide at your wrist, or like in Charlotte Dymond, Matthew had the razor ‘waiting at his wrist’. A difference between the two poems would be; in Charlotte Dymond the writer uses a range of different languages. For example, similes are used a lot, like in stanza fourteen there are two similes, they are; her skin was soft as sable, and her eyes were wide as day. Whereas in John Lomas, there is only one simile in the whole ballad, that simile is; my conscience did like fuel burn. That simile is in stanza nine. In comparison Charlotte Dymond has four similes and John Lomas has one. Similes are when you say something is like another thing or when someone says some as so for example the tree was like a wall, or the journey was as long as a mountain. The writer could of not wanted more similes in John Lomas because maybe he didn’t want things to be referred to as something else. Another difference is that in Charlotte