Text 3 – The Sweet Menu by Jeremy Hughes

1. Text 3 – The Sweet Menu by Jeremy Hughes Lesson Objective: To explore the poet’s feelings and attitudes

2. Creative writing • Imagine you are in a busy restaurant; happy couples and families everywhere; yet you are alone. Write a FIRST PERSON account of how this feels. • What you see around you • How this makes you feel

3. The Sweet Menu • The narrator describes eating in a restaurant on his own • The poem is written in couplets – until the final stanza where the one line is isolated – this could represent how all restaurants cater for couples and not single people • He feels even more alone and isolated by eating in a crowded, busy restaurant

4. Key Literary Terms • Symbolism • Metaphor • Irony • Tone • Pun

5. Choosing what to write about • Avoid feature spotting • This is a big problem in the exam • Students like to show off their knowledge of the literary and linguistic terminology • It won’t get you credit if all you say is ‘the poet uses metaphors, similes, irony and tone to create a sad poem...’ • Take time on each individual technique • Pick out the MOST RELEVANT • You DON’T need to talk about EVERYTHING!!

6. With that in mind... • The writer uses symbolism • The empty chair which is ‘pulled back as if someone will come’ symbolises his feelings of isolation • The fact that it is empty illustrates that firstly, restaurants cater for couples rather than single people, and secondly, it emphasises his feelings of being alone. The fact that it is pulled back presumably by the waitress ‘as if someone will come’ illustrates society’s expectations of eating in a restaurant; it is something to be done as a group rather than on your own.

7. Now you have a go • Choose one of the following techniques to expand on: • Pun ‘it hasn’t come to much’ • The dancing Metaphors • Structure (couplets with one single last line) • The irregularity of the line lengths and lack of rhyme pattern • The flower