AI ToolsNew
Tools to make learning and teaching easier
Question about this poem?
Have a question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
Ask us
Ask us
Ask a question
Ask a question
Ask a question
-
“The Enemies” Introduction
-
British poet Elizabeth Jennings's "The Enemies" describes a city that at first welcomes a band of new arrivals: strangers who arrive in town one night without explanation. But that welcome only lasts a day. Soon, the citizens are fretting about who these strangers are and what they want. In turning against the strangers, they turn against their friends, too, trusting no one. This mysterious story suggests that it might often be difficult for people to stay open to the new and strange. "The Enemies" was first collected in Jennings's Collected Poems (1987).
-
-
“The Enemies” Summary
-
The poem's speaker describes a mysterious band of people who crossed a river to arrive in a city. The women of the city were awake and ready to welcome the new arrivals, offering them food and asking them no questions about what they wanted, what language they spoke, or why they had arrived out of nowhere like this.
But now it's the following morning, the speaker says, and the whole city is full of tales about the sudden invasion that happened last night. The women who welcomed the strangers now point out that they still haven't explained why they're here. Clearly, however, the strangers didn't come to destroy the city; everything is still peaceful.
Nevertheless, the city is on edge. People, even old friends, talk to each other guardedly, hide their expressions, and greet each other without kindness. Everyone has the same thoughts: "I'd better hide myself, in case the strangers have put new ideas into the minds of my friends, where I used to feel so at home. I'd better close off my own mind, even if the strangers are already in there with me."
-
-
“The Enemies” Themes
-
The Fear of the Unknown
In "The Enemies," change and strangeness destabilize a whole city. As the poem begins, a group of unknown people arrives in a nameless city. They meet with a warm welcome—at first. The "women" of the town greet them "with lights and food," hosting them unquestioningly. The strangers are treated as guests: no one asks them any questions about their language, their reasons for coming, or what they might want. But this unquestioning welcome lasts only one night. The next day, the citizens are nervous, as untrusting of each other as they are of the new arrivals. Although "peace is apparent still"—that the strangers clearly mean no harm and aren't here to cause trouble—the citizens grow anxious and wary. Even old friends find that there is "no warmth" when they greet each other now. The mere fact that unknown people have arrived in town, in other words, puts the whole city on its guard. The jittery citizens draw a sharp line between them and us, treating the strangers as outsiders simply because they're new to town.
They even become worried that the strangers have somehow invaded their very minds, "haunt[ing]" then in their own internal "house[s]"—in other words, that the presence of the strangers has changed them and everyone they know. Strangers and old friends alike all become "enemies" to each other, transformed by fear.
Readers might take this story literally, as a tale about the difficulty of truly welcoming people whom one sees as outsiders, somehow different from oneself. But one can also read the poem as an allegory of how hard it is to face any kind of novelty and change. The citizens' fretful, withdrawn response to the strangers suggests that anything new, different, and unknown might inspire anxiety. Though the city is willing enough to accept the strangers at first, their nerve fails quickly—and this, the poem hints, might be a common human problem.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Enemies”
-
Lines 1-6
Last night they ...
... through the land."The Enemies" begins with a mysterious arrival. "Last night," the speaker reports, a crowd of unknown people "came across the river and / Entered the city." The language here flings readers right into the middle of the action. The speaker doesn't even feel the need to say what city this is: it's just "the city." It's as if the readers, too, are citizens, listening to the gossip about what happened the night before.
As the speaker tells it, the "women" of the city welcomed the new arrivals with open arms, bringing "lights and food," unhesitatingly hosting the strangers. No one asked "what strange tongue [the strangers] spoke" or "why they came so suddenly" to the city; they just offered instinctive hospitality. But the fact that the speaker remarks on that hospitality suggests that there's something unusual about such openness. Among the many questions the women did not ask, the speaker notes, is "what the men had come to take"—not the sort of question one would even dream of asking a welcome guest.
In this moment of kindness, then, there's a hint of trouble to come. The city has welcomed the strangers for now, but they might not stay so friendly. Even the poem's rhythms suggest a certain tension. Listen to the halting enjambments in lines 1-3, for instance:
Last night they came across the river and
Entered the city. Women were awake
With lights and food. [...]These mid-sentence breaks appear at odd moments, introducing little jolts of tension: what will the unexpected "they" do after they cross the river? How will the women respond?
And then there's the poem's meter. The poem mostly ticks along in iambic pentameter—lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "Not ask- | ing what | the men | had come | to take." In line 5, though, the poem falls back to iambic trimeter, just three iambs in a row: "Or what | strange tongue | they spoke." The shorter line feels hesitant, as if it's drawing back in fear.
The speaker's vagueness about identity and location makes this poem feel rather mysterious and tense, too. All the players here feel as if they could have come from a fairy tale: there are just the "band" who arrive, the "river" they cross, the "city" they enter, the "women" who greet them. Perhaps that ambiguity sets readers up to interpret this story symbolically or allegorically as well as literally. This doesn't seem to be a story about a particular incident, but one that could happen anywhere, any time.
-
Lines 7-12
Now in the ...
... hearth and field.
Unlock all 288 words of this analysis of Lines 7-12 of “The Enemies,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Lines 13-16
Yet all the ...
... hands accepting hands; -
Lines 17-20
Each ponders, "Better ...
... my own house."
-
-
“The Enemies” Symbols
-
The Strangers
The poem's "strangers" can be read as symbols of the new and unfamiliar in general.
When the strangers first arrive in town, the people of the city welcome them kindly. But the next day, they do an immediate about-face, suspecting the visitors of an "invasion" and mistrusting their unfamiliarity: they speak a "strange tongue" and don't offer a "reason for [their] coming."
Read symbolically, this story might also suggest that people tend to greet anything strange and new—ideas, emotions, changes—with mistrust, any initial curiosity and openness turning swiftly to suspicion. Too robust an inner wall between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the poem hints, might breed a stagnant and fearful way of life.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “Last night they came across the river and / Entered the city.”
- Lines 4-6: “what the men had come to take / Or what strange tongue they spoke / Or why they came so suddenly through the land.”
- Line 8: “the swift and dark invasion”
- Lines 9-10: “not one stranger told / A reason for his coming”
- Lines 17-20: “"Better hide myself in case / Those strangers have set up their homes in minds / I used to walk in. Better draw the blinds / Even if the strangers haunt in my own house."”
-
-
“The Enemies” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Extended Metaphor
The poem closes with an extended metaphor in which minds, faces, and hearts are houses: places where people can be invited in or shut out. The metaphor arrives subtly in the moment when "Old friends / Close up the candid looks upon their face." Here, a "candid," frank, unguarded expression becomes an open door or an unshuttered window, something through which a friend might enter. That idea gets more explicit when the speaker peers into the minds of all the citizens and finds them thinking:
[...] "Better hide myself in case
Those strangers have set up their homes in minds
I used to walk in. Better draw the blinds
Even if the strangers haunt in my own house."Here, people are houses that others can make themselves comfortable in—if the door is open and they're invited. By the same token, people are houses that others can invade like thieves, or even "haunt" like ghosts.
This metaphor draws a connection between the city that invites the strangers in and the people of that city. At first, the people behave individually as they do collectively, opening not just their literal but their metaphorical doors to the strangers, offering them comfort and treating them as friends. Alas, it takes only a day for them to do an about-face and "draw the blinds" against these new people.
Where extended metaphor appears in the poem:- Lines 14-15: “Old friends / Close up the candid looks upon their face.”
- Lines 17-20: “Each ponders, "Better hide myself in case / Those strangers have set up their homes in minds / I used to walk in. Better draw the blinds / Even if the strangers haunt in my own house."”
-
Parallelism
Unlock all 292 words of this analysis of Parallelism in “The Enemies,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Enjambment
-
Sibilance
-
-
“The Enemies” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Band
- Tongue
- Devastation
- Hearth
- Candid
Band-
(Location in poem: Line 3: “They entertained the band”)
A group of people. Here, it refers to the mysterious group of people who enter the city.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Enemies”
-
Form
The 20 lines of "The Enemies" are divided into three stanzas of varying length: two sestets (or six-line stanzas) and a closing octave (or eight-line stanza). That final longer stanza at the end reflects the poem's building tension. At first, all is peaceful when the mysterious strangers arrive in town. But the locals get more and more mistrustful, and the final drawn-out, dithering, repetitive stanza captures their anxiety.
This is a form of Jennings's own design. In other respects, the poem (like much of her work) is pretty traditional:
- It's mostly written in iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "Not ask- | ing what | the men | had come | to take"), one of the most common meters in English-language poetry (though it does use occasional lines of iambic trimeter—just three iambs).
- It also uses predictable patterns of rhyme.
These unobtrusive choices keep readers' attention more on the poem's storytelling than its form.
-
Meter
"The Enemies" is written in a mixture of iambic meters. For the most part, the poem uses iambic pentameter: that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's an example from line 13:
Yet all | the cit- | y is | a haunt- | ed place.
This is a common and familiar meter; readers will likely have encountered it before in the works of (for just a few examples) Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and will probably feel prepared for the same rhythm to tick steadily along.
In line 5, however, the speaker introduces a surprising line of iambic trimeter (just three iambs), pulling the stanzas up short:
Or what | strange tongue | they spoke
Similarly, line 11 is missing its final final stressed beat:
Was not | for de- | vasta- | tion:
Those shorter lines create a halting, nervous tone befitting the poem's themes of uncertainty and mistrust.
The last and longest stanza, however, sticks to iambic pentameter throughout, giving the locals' final rejection of the strangers a settled momentum.
-
Rhyme Scheme
In the first two stanzas of "The Enemies," the rhyme scheme runs as follows:
ABABBA CDCDDC
The rhymes of the first stanza, for instance, are:
[...] and [A]
[...] awake [B]
[...] band, [A]
[...] take [B]
[...] spoke [B]
[...] land. [A]Extra A and D rhymes break the alternating pattern in lines 5 and 11, falling just where shorter lines of iambic trimeter do. That helps to make the poem's notes of hesitation stand out more sharply in the reader's ear, and also capture an important movement in the poem: turning around. Each stanza's rhymes reverse course to ends on the rhyme they began on, mirroring the locals' turn against the strangers they at first welcome.
The longer closing stanza follows a similar pattern, simply adding one more pair of alternating rhymes at the beginning of the stanza. Here's how that sounds:
EFEFEFFE
Readers might note that many rhymes here are slant, not perfect—like take and spoke in lines 4-5 or filled, told, and field in lines 7, 9, and 12. Those off-kilter almost-rhymes help to support the poem's general tone of unease.
-
-
“The Enemies” Speaker
-
The speaker here is an omniscient and anonymous narrator. They're not part of the story they tell; they simply observe from a little distance as a city first welcomes "strangers" in, then almost immediately turns against them. Though they seem to have an intimate knowledge of the people they observe, they don't precisely feel like a fellow citizen.
Alongside the vagueness of the poem's setting, the speaker's storytelling tone makes the poem feel like a fairy tale—or perhaps a cautionary tale. This story isn't about any one particular city, any one particular group of people, or any one particular speaker. Instead, it's about a deep human tendency to turn against what's unfamiliar, whether that's a person one sees as an "outsider" or a thought or feeling unlike those one has had before.
-
-
“The Enemies” Setting
-
The poem's setting is a vague and dreamy one. Readers learn that "The Enemies" takes place in a "city" bordered by a "river," but that's about it. This poem could take place anywhere and at any time.
And that's exactly the point. Jennings isn't making a commentary on any particular city here, but rather about humanity in general. Pick any city in the whole history of the world, the poem quietly suggests, and you'll likely find a story about its people first welcoming strangers, then turning against them in mistrust.
Perhaps the poem might even be read as an allegory for something that happens inside people. New ideas or new feelings might likewise feel like mysterious strangers arriving in town, and might likewise inspire fear in their hosts.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “The Enemies”
Literary Context
Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) was an English poet of passionate spiritual conviction. Born in the north of England, she moved to Oxford as a child and spent the rest of her life there—following in the footsteps of one of her greatest influences, fellow Oxford poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Like Hopkins, Jennings was a devout Catholic, and she shared the earlier poet's deeply felt sense of nature's holiness. She even titled one of her books The Mind Has Mountains after a line from Hopkins's "No worst, there is none," a poem about spiritual desolation. Jennings perhaps shared some fellow feeling with Hopkins: both grappled with serious mental illness in their lives, enduring deep depressions.
Jennings's style and interests were always a little out of step with contemporary poetic movements. She wrote much of her poetry in the years when writers like Allen Ginsberg were doing wild experiments with poetic form and subject, but Jennings preferred a more traditional path, favoring sonnets over freeform Beat poetry.
This poem was first collected in Jennings's 1987 Collected Poems. Jennings was a prolific and quietly successful poet during her lifetime, and she was made a CBE in 1992.
Historical Context
Elizabeth Jennings' life took in all the chaos of the mid-20th century. Born in 1926, she lived through World War II (when her native England was regularly bombed by German planes). Her most productive years as a poet took in all the uproar and change of the '60s and '70s. England in those decades was a place of energy, idealism, and enthusiasm, and a hub of style and innovation. Beatlemania kicked off the "British Invasion," in which British pop music took the world by storm. Television came into its own as an art form, and shows like The Avengers and Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted.
All this creative energy was set against a changeable political landscape. In Britain as in the US, freedom movements for feminism, civil rights, and denuclearization clashed with old-guard politicians, and the British economy was unstable. Against this backdrop of chaotic change, Jennings was one of many who sought constancy in older artistic and religious traditions.
In this poem, however, she seems to reflect disapprovingly on a changing world's reactionary xenophobia. As immigration to the UK boomed in the mid-20th century, anti-immigrant sentiment boomed likewise. Jennings here observes how quickly people swerve from welcoming strangers to fearing them.
-
More “The Enemies” Resources
-
External Resources
-
A Brief Biography — Learn more about Jennings's life.
-
An Interview with Jennings — Read an interview in which Jennings discusses her work and her life.
-
More of Jennings's Work — Visit the Poetry Archive to read (and hear!) more of Jennings's poetry.
-
Jennings's Legacy — Read Jennings's obituary to learn more about how her work was received.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Elizabeth Jennings
-
