The Meaning of International Movement in Roger Robinson's 'Monarch Exodus' Amelie Maurice-Jones 12th Grade

In ‘Monarch Exodus’, Roger Robinson uses the image of a travelling host of butterflies in order to draw attention to the plight of the immigrant who similarly must flee from home and venture onwards to a setting both unfamiliar and hostile. Robinson offers insight into the mental process of the travelling character, whose overlapping fear and gritty determination is able to reflect the stance of so many across the globe forced to seek solace in foreign lands.

Through the extended metaphor of flying butterflies, Robinson is able to track the mental and physical journey of refugees journeying in search of safety. This is immediately made apparent by the regular ABA rhyme scheme used to mirror the monotonous journey of the traveller, or perhaps echo the pace of the refugee’s heart which rapidly and nervously beats. Detailing this is the mid-stanza line ‘We’re restless hearts that live in flight’, with the synecdoche of ‘hearts’ coupled with the blunt form of declarative working to convey the sense that the immigrant’s lifestyle is governed by base physical instincts which arise from within. Indeed, the poem is written predominately in iambic tetrameter which is able to capture the determination of the travelling butterfly, or...