Differences In Characters In Havisham, Hitcher and the Laboratory

There are many similarities between each of the characters in these poems but they also all vary in many ways.It appears that all of the characters are homicidal or otherwise intent on violence towards another person,but each of the characters does it in a different way.

The poem “Havisham” is is a monologue spoken by Miss Havisham, a character in Dickens ‘Great Expectations’.After being left at the alter by he fianc�, she continues to wear her wedding dress and sit in her room without washing or changing her clothes for the rest of her life, while she plots revenge on all men.She tells the reader that has has prayed everyday for the death of her fiance and that her eyes have shrunk hard and her hands have sinews strong enough to strangle with – which fits her murderous wish for revenge on her, “beloved sweetheart bastard.Not a day since then have I not wished him dead.”

Read this 

Though Miss Havisham has not actually harmed another person she is willing to and wants to either kill or badly hurt the man who left her standing at the altar.

She is similar to the speaker in Hitcher by her wish to hurt another person but she is has more in common with the speaker from The Laboratory because she has also been hurt by a man and wishes revenge.

The poem “Hitcher” has a character who expresses violence in a completely different manner.The poem is a sort of monlogue where the speaker casually admits to possibly murdering an innocent hitchhiker.The speaker tells us that he has been taking time off work – faking illness and not answering his phone. Being threatened with the sack, he goes in to work again and gets a lift to his hired car. As he drives out of Leeds he picks up a hitchhiker who is travelling light and has no set destination. Some little way later he attacks his passenger, and throws him out of the still-moving car. The last he sees of the hiker, he is “bouncing off the kerb, then disappearing down the verge” – we do not know if he is dead or just badly injured. The driver does not appear to care.

The speaker in this poem has actually harmed or possibly killed another person and does not seem even slightly troubled by what he has done.

This person is similar to the other speakers because he wants to hurt people but is largely different because he has actually carried out his actions by killing or injuring somone instead of wishing or plotting.

The Laboratory is a poem about a woman in 18th century France who is planning to kill her rival in front of her lover at the King’s palace. It is in the form of a monologue and she is at an alchemist’s shop or an apothacary, telling the proprieter about her plans.As she tells the shop owner and the reader of what she plans to do she expresses an interest in the type of poison the old man is preparing and exactly what it will do to her victim- – like the gum in the “mortar”.”This seems to suggest that she is unstable in someway or becoming deluded.The speaker has begun with a specific purpose – of poisoning one person – but now she seems to want to poison more than one person (Pauline and Elise).

The desire and will to inflict pain on others is a similarity is still present in this poem.The speaker in this poem is closer to actually commiting murder than the speaker in ‘Havisham’ but has not yet gone as far as possibly killing someone like in ‘Hitcher’.

Overall there are many similarities and differences between all of the speakers in the poems.All show signs of a decaying sanity because of what has happened to them.Though each either plans to commit murder or has commited murder because of a different reason or in a different manner.