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“Hitcher” Introduction
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"Hitcher" appears in the collection Book of Matches (1993), by English writer Simon Armitage. A dramatic monologue from the perspective of a man frustrated with his work, the poem lives up to the "dramatic" part of the term. The speaker, driving a rented car (perhaps as part of his job), picks up a hitchhiker and brutally assaults him before leaving him for dead. The perpetrator and victim have very different views of the world: the speaker's mainstream, clock-punching, materialist life contrasts with the hitcher's free-spirited anti-consumerism. The poem thus presents not only a shockingly casual description of violence but also a symbolic clash of ideologies.
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“Hitcher” Summary
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The speaker says that he had been feeling worn out and sick. He kept getting angry messages from his boss, telling him that if he called out sick one more time, they'd fire him. He hitched a ride to pick up a car, which was a Vauxhall Astra rental.
He picked up a hitchhiker in the city of Leeds. The hitchhiker was traveling in the direction of the setting sun, carrying nothing but a toothbrush and sleeping on the ground each night. He quoted Bob Dylan, saying the truth is "blowin' in the wind," or else just around the corner.
The speaker attacked him on the main road out of Harrogate, first headbutting him, then striking his face six times with the steering-wheel lock. The speaker kept the car steady the whole time.
He shifted down to third gear and leaned over to push the hitchhiker out through the passenger door. In the mirror, the speaker watched as the man hit the curb and rolled away off the grassy edge of the road. He and the speaker were basically the same age, with maybe a week's difference between them.
The hitchhiker has told the speaker that he loved feeling the wind tousle his hair. It was midday. The weather was looking decent. Screw that, the speaker thought—if he wants to get to his destination, he can walk there himself.
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“Hitcher” Themes
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The Mainstream vs. Counterculture
"Hitcher" can be read as a kind of allegory for the conflict between the consumerist mainstream and free-spirited counterculture. The poem’s speaker is a seemingly normal worker who’s been threatened by his boss for taking too many sick days. He picks up a hitchhiker who rejects material possessions and whose carefree, self-determined lifestyle seems like the polar opposite of the speaker’s. The poem thus pitches two rival ideologies against each other: mainstream capitalism vs. anti-consumerist, independent hippiedom. The speaker’s sudden attack on the hitchhiker suggests that he threatens the speaker’s worldview, and, perhaps, that the speaker can't admit his dissatisfaction with his own way of life.
The speaker’s life seems decidedly average and unfulfilling. He has a boring job that seems to take him around England, driving from city to city in rental cars (the Vauxhall Astra even has a reputation as a bland kind of car). His car trip is either part of his commute or part of his job, and the job may not pay well enough for him to afford his own vehicle. His "tired, under / the weather" mood suggests a kind of malaise: perhaps he subconsciously dislikes his mundane life or his role as a cog in the capitalist machine (that is, a system motivated above all by profit). His schedule also seems tightly controlled by his job: his boss threatens to fire him if he takes any more sick days. Readers don’t know how egregious the speaker has been in taking time off, of course, but it certainly seems like this company is placing profit before his well-being.
The hitchhiker, on the other hand, has next to no possessions and can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants. This man loves to be in touch with nature, following the "sun from east to west" with "just the good earth for a bed." He enjoys living in the open air, feeling the wind "run its fingers / through his hair." He also quotes the famous folk singer Bob Dylan, declaring that the truth is "blowin' in the wind." Dylan was an essential figure in the 1960s folk revival, which condemned the commercialization of mainstream culture and embraced authenticity. The Dylan quote further links the hitchhiker with the counterculture; in classic hippie fashion, he seems to reject the conventional world of consumerism and profit-driven work.
Perhaps, then, the speaker brutally assaults the hitchhiker because the man represents a threat to the speaker's ideology and way of life. Through his act of violence, the speaker reasserts his dominance over the hitchhiker. By killing (or nearly killing) this free-spirited hippie, perhaps the speaker is trying to quash his own doubts about the life he leads.
Yet there are also some uneasy parallels between the two characters. The speaker has to hitch a ride to get to his rental car, just as the hitchhiker needs a lift. The two men are "the same age, give or take a week." The speaker's aggression, then, might stem as much from their similarities as from their differences. The hitchhiker shows that the speaker, too, could live another kind of life, one that might nourish his soul rather than his bank account. But truly embracing this idea, the poem suggests, would require the speaker to do some deep soul-searching. It's easier to eliminate this ideological threat than to look inward and ask hard questions about what it means to be human in the modern world.
Read symbolically, this attack might also represent the way mainstream, capitalist culture callously destroys any threats to its continued existence. A profit-driven society can’t abide those who seek the simple "truth" that’s "blowin' in the wind"—and will do what it takes to silence them.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-25
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The Potential for Violence
"Hitcher" tells a brutal tale of violence from the perspective of the attacker: a worker under pressure who picks up a hitchhiker, only to batter him and leave him for dead. The speaker's casual tone and seemingly normal demeanor make this act all the more shocking. The tale illustrates how the potential for violence lurks under the surface of everyday life. One never knows, the poem suggests, what people are capable of.
Early in the poem, there's no hint that the speaker is about to commit such a terrible act. In fact, he seems average rather than deeply disturbed. He's been "tired" and "under / the weather," but not necessarily to any unusual degree. He's also missed a few shifts and is close to getting fired. Still, he doesn't seem all that concerned—on the surface, at least. Perhaps traveling on business, the speaker picks up a rental car and drives to Leeds. His car is perfectly average (a Vauxhall Astra), and he's not going anywhere exciting or exotic. Again, there’s nothing to set off readers' alarm bells or to hint at the speaker's underlying anger.
The speaker offers a ride to a hitchhiker, who sounds like a hippie: he's a Bob Dylan fan traveling with nothing but a toothbrush and sleeping on "the good earth" (that is, the ground). He's a carefree wanderer and certainly very different from the speaker, but there's still no suggestion of what's about to happen.
Then, without warning, the speaker attacks the hitchhiker, headbutting him and clubbing him with the steering wheel lock. The sudden violence is as surprising to the reader as to the hitchhiker himself; the assault is both savage and inexplicable. Something in the speaker snaps, apparently, and he takes out his aggression on an innocent stranger. The speaker doesn't even "swerve" during the assault, as though his two identities as traveling worker and brutal attacker seamlessly coexist. Violence and normality sit side-by-side, the poem suggests, and regular people are capable of extreme, shocking acts.
What's most disturbing is how the speaker immediately reverts to business as usual, as though the assault never happened. After the attack, he just keeps on driving, while the hitchhiker is probably dying in a ditch. Toward the end of the poem, he matter-of-factly notes that the "outlook for the day" is "moderate to fair." In other words, the weather will be plain and unremarkable—just like the speaker himself. In the end, the poem might simply be a horrifying portrait of a deviant mind. But it might also be satirizing how modern, polite society pushes regular people to the brink, encouraging them to swallow their rage and resentment until they explode.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-25
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Hitcher”
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Lines 1-5
I'd been tired, under ...
... It was hired."Hitcher" is a dramatic monologue: its speaker is a separate character from the poet. This speaker is a frustrated man with a dull job, recounting what at first sounds like an unremarkable story about picking up a hitchhiker.
This first stanza provides some information about the speaker's situation. He recalls feeling "tired" and "under / the weather" before the poem's events took place. In other words, he'd been feeling sick—or maybe suffering from a more general malaise, such as dissatisfaction with his life. He had certainly claimed to be ill, as the "ansaphone" (answering machine) message in line 3 makes clear:
One more sick-note, mister, and you're finished. Fired.
The voice "scream[s]" this threat at the male speaker ("mister"), so it seems the speaker's work life had been miserable. A demanding boss had been hurling abuse at him and treating his sick leave with contempt. So the poem does begin with some tension—but there's no hint, yet, of the terrible event that comes later.
Caving to the threat, the speaker goes to work. First, he picks up a rental car, which he needs either for his commute or for the job itself. He "thumb[s] a lift" to the car's location, making him the first "Hitcher" in the poem. This detail sets up a subtle, but crucial, parallel between the speaker and the hitchhiker he'll soon meet.
Initially, the poem's language is as uneventful as the speaker's life. Line 5, for example, specifies the make of the speaker's rental car (known in the UK as a hire car):
A Vauxhall Astra. It was hired.
The speaker's tone sounds flat, perhaps even depressed. That full-stop caesura slows the line down, building an atmosphere of boredom and frustration. The car itself is about as average as they come: a small family car, common in the UK. It seems to symbolize the speaker's conventional, uninspired lifestyle, his role as a small cog in the capitalist machine. However, "Astra" comes from the Latin word for star, perhaps hinting at the speaker's frustrated ambitions—his subconscious longing for a brighter, more romantic existence.
Everything about this opening stanza, then, lulls the reader into a false sense of security. It also establishes the poem's form: quintains (five-line stanzas) in which the first and fifth lines are shorter than those in between, and the middle line is the longest. It's as if the poem is struggling to escape the constraint of its shorter lines—and sometimes bursts out of them, but only temporarily. Soon enough, this pattern will make sense in terms of the speaker's personality.
"Fired" (line 3) and "hired" (line 5) set up the expectation of a rhyme scheme, but the poem thwarts this expectation: there won't be another full rhyme until the final stanza. These two words are staples of capitalist work culture, in which people get hired and dismissed according to their usefulness and with little regard for their mental health. Subtly, then, the rhyme reflects the poem's broader social commentary.
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Lines 6-10
I picked him ...
... the next bend.
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Lines 11-15
I let him ...
... it into third -
Lines 16-20
and leant across ...
... liked the breeze -
Lines 20-25
He'd said he ...
... walk from there.
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“Hitcher” Symbols
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The Car
The speaker's car works as a symbol with multiple layers:
- The model, a Vauxhall Astra, is about as standard and conventional as it comes. It's a mainstream brand name in the UK. The choice of car stands in for the speaker's lifestyle and worldview more generally: bland, functional, and consumerist. "Astra" comes from the Latin for "star," which might suggest a subconscious yearning for a different, more mystical type of existence—or at least a hint that other ways of life (like the hitchhiker's) remain possible.
- The car is also a little world in and of itself. It's like a microcosm of "normal" society, one in which the speaker calls the shots. The hitchhiker enters as a kind of malign outside influence, which the speaker duly deals with.
- Notice, too, that the speaker's weapon is part of the car. A "krooklok" is a brand name for a steering-wheel lock. Normally, a lock protects possessions—here it protects the speaker's worldview. The speaker batters the hitchhiker with a symbol of his own fixed ideology.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 4-5: “I thumbed a lift to where the car was parked. / A Vauxhall Astra. It was hired.”
- Lines 13-14: “then six times with the krooklok / in the face—and didn't even swerve.”
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“Hitcher” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
The poem makes one clear allusion, which appears in the second stanza (lines 8-10):
[...] The truth,
he said, was blowin' in the wind,
or round the next bend."Blowin' in the Wind" is a 1962 song by Bob Dylan, and one of the key anthems of the 1960s folk revival and counterculture movement. It's a song about freedom, peace, and the folly of humankind. (Earlier in the stanza, "following the sun from west to east" might also allude to Dylan: the chorus of his famous 1968 song "I Shall Be Released" begins, "I see my light come shining / From the west unto the east.") Within the poem, the Dylan allusion portrays the hitchhiker as a hippie-like character. He doesn't buy into the speaker's conventional workaday lifestyle.
Note, though, the hitchhiker's reference is a little dated. The Vauxhall Astra didn't come out until the 1980s, so there is no way this poem can be set in the 1960s. By this point in the 20th century, capitalist consumerism has largely won out over the idealistic longing of the hippie movement. Perhaps that's partly what enrages the speaker about the hitchhiker.
It's not clear whether it's the speaker or the hitchhiker who says "round the next bend." Either way, it ties in ironically with the main allusion. Perhaps it's a little quip made by the hitchhiker to try and break the ice with the stranger driving the car. Or maybe it's the speaker's own joke to himself. But it's "round the next bend" that the speaker suddenly assaults the man and leaves him for dead. This, in a way, is the speaker's answer to the rhetorical questions posed by a song like "Blowin' in the Wind": he perpetuates the same kind of senseless violence the song critiques.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 8-10: “The truth, / he said, was blowin' in the wind, / or round the next bend.”
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Caesura
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Enjambment
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Juxtaposition
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“Hitcher” 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.
- Under the weather
- Ansaphone
- Sick-note
- Thumbed a lift
- Vauxhall Astra
- Hired
- Leeds
- Blowin' in the wind
- Harrogate
- Krooklok
- Dropped it into third
- The verge
- Outlook
- Stitch that
Under the weather-
(Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “I'd been tired, under / the weather,”)
Sick; unwell.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Hitcher”
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Form
"Hitcher" is a dramatic monologue: it's entirely in the voice of a made-up character. In dramatic monologues, the speaker's language and selection of details reveal aspects of their personality. Here, for example, the speaker's casual tone (e.g., "I let him have it" in line 11) demonstrates his disregard for the man he picks up—and lack of guilt over assaulting him.
The poem consists of five quintains (five-line stanzas). The first and last lines of each stanza are shorter than those in between, and the middle line is always the longest. The consistent stanza shape may be meant to mimic the repetitiveness of car travel, or of the speaker's life in general.
Though the stanza pattern is fairly strict, the poem doesn't follow a meter, and it contains many enjambments (phrases spilling over from line to line or stanza to stanza). The quintain is like a box from which the poem subtly tries to escape. Perhaps, then, the stanza shape is meant to evoke modern society's conventions and norms. The speaker mostly adheres to these—except he's also brutally violent. He breaks free from constraints, then goes right back to them, never examining what it is within himself that makes him so violent. The progression from short, tight lines to long, loose lines—and back again—might mimic this cycle within the speaker's psyche.
Notice, too, how the poem starts and ends with the speaker driving on his own. It's almost as if the violence in the middle never happened!
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Meter
"Hitcher" is mostly written in free verse. The lack of strict meter gives the monologue a casual tone, which makes perfect sense: this speaker is a man who can beat up a fellow human being, leave him for dead, and then carry on driving as if nothing happened.
That said, the poem does slip into a strong iambic meter in places. Iambs are metrical feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern (da-DUM). Line 4, for example, is perfect iambic pentameter (meaning it has five iambic feet):
I thumbed | a lift | to where | the car | was parked.
Lines like this perhaps reflect the speaker's surface conventionality, in that they give the poem a kind of background steadiness (though not all the way through). For another example, look at lines 16-18, displayed here with the line breaks removed:
and leant | across | to let | him out, | and saw | him in | the mir- | ror bounc-| ing off | the kerb, | then dis- | appear- | ing down | the verge.
This is a string of fourteen straight iambs! (The previous two lines are strongly iambic, too.) The steady rhythm might reflect how the speaker keeps the car steady during his frenzied attack on the hitchhiker. Its bounciness might also be meant to mimic the "bouncing" of the hitcher's body.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Hitcher" doesn't have a rhyme scheme as such, though readers might expect one on the evidence of the first stanza. Lines 3 and 5 rhyme loud and true: "Fired"/"hired." Note that these two words relate to the modern, corporate work culture, which is what seems to put the speaker under intense pressure. (Though that's no excuse for his actions, of course!)
After this, however, the rhymes mostly disappear until the last stanza, which rhymes "fair" (line 23) with "there" (line 25). There's also a softer slant rhyme between "wind" and "bend" in the second stanza (lines 9 and 10). Perhaps the lack of rhyme in the middle stanzas reflects a transgression from normality. In both the first and last stanzas, the speaker is alone, driving his car—and both stanzas rhyme. In the second, the pattern changes as he picks up the hitcher. In the third and fourth, he acts in a way most people never would—and the subtle orderliness of the rhymes disappears.
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“Hitcher” Speaker
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"Hitcher" is a dramatic monologue, so it uses the first person throughout. The speaker is male (his boss calls him "mister"). He lives a conventional life and works a boring job—which is probably why he keeps calling in sick.
The speaker never talks openly about himself. But, as is often the case with dramatic monologues, what the speaker says and how he says it reveals a lot about his character. He seems to hate everything that his passenger stands for: rejection of the capitalist system, love of the natural world, and commitment to an alternative way of living. But the two men are of similar ages—and both depend on rides from strangers—so the hitchhiker's very existence suggests that the speaker could live differently if he wanted to. One way of interpreting the speaker's violent streak, then, is that it suppresses his doubts about the life he leads. It's easier to kill a man than to ask himself hard questions about his identity and choices.
Notice, too, how nonchalantly the speaker recalls his violent episode. References to extreme violence sit side-by-side with banal observations about the weather. The poem is a casual anecdote, told with a chilling lack of remorse. It's as though the speaker's bland, mainstream exterior and inner brutality are opposite sides of the same coin.
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“Hitcher” Setting
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The setting of the poem, or at least the anecdote the speaker tells, is the north of England. The speaker picks up a car, then collects his victim from the city of Leeds and drives north through the town of Harrogate.
The speaker doesn't say precisely when this all took place. The hitchhiker acts and talks like a hippie. But the speaker's car, a Vauxhall Astra, dates the poem much later than the 1960s countercultural era. This is at least 1980, and probably even later. The hitchhiker, then, is a man out of time, a kind of throwback to a different era—one that the speaker clearly detests. (Given the similarities between the two men, it's possible that the hitchhiker reminds the speaker of a previous self he'd like to leave behind, or a path he wishes he'd taken but never will. After all, he last sees the hitchhiker "disappearing" in his rearview "mirror.")
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Literary and Historical Context of “Hitcher”
Literary Context
Simon Armitage is one of the UK's most popular contemporary poets. He was born in Yorkshire in 1963 and began writing poetry at a young age. His first collection, Zoom!, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 1989 and was an immediate success, selling well and getting shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award.
Armitage's poems are known for their dark comedy, clarity, and playfulness. Their outward simplicity often conceals a complex emotional world and reflects the influence of other important 20th-century poets, such as Ted Hughes, W. H. Auden, and Philip Larkin.
"Hitcher" was published in Armitage's 1993 collection Book of Matches. In this book and others, Armitage makes frequent use of the dramatic monologue form, the poetic equivalent of throwing one's voice. Carol Ann Duffy, a contemporary of Armitage's, also uses this formal technique.
Armitage is the current Poet Laureate of England, having taken over from Duffy. Originally, the Laureate's main duty was composing poems for major public occasions. Nowadays, the Laureate tends to focus on furthering poetry's audience, particularly in an educational context—the kind of work that Armitage has been doing for many years.
Historical Context
"Hitcher" dramatizes one of the key ideological conflicts of the 20th century: mainstream consumerism vs. free-spirited counterculture. This conflict took many forms over the decades, but a major flashpoint was the 1960s. Throughout this decade, younger people rebelled en masse against social conventions, opposing the conservative views of their parents, racial and gender inequalities, and humanity's lust for war. Hippies (as they were popularly known) wanted to opt out of mainstream society and find new ways of doing things. Disenchanted with the booming consumer culture of the post-WWII years, many advocated for leftist or egalitarian economic policies, and some even tried to model alternative societies on communes.
The hitchhiker might seem like he belongs to that '60s generation. Indeed, he quotes one of the era's key anthems, the Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind," which originated in the early 1960s folk revival and protest movement. But the poem is definitely not set in the '60s, because the speaker drives a "Vauxhall Astra"—a car that didn't come out until the 1980s. Thus, the poem is set much closer to the period in which it was published. By the 1980s and 1990s, the battle between mainstream consumerism and free-spirited counterculture had largely ended, with the former apparently winning. Corporations and advertisers found ways to absorb the liberation movements of the '60s, repackaging people's desire for freedom as a set of products they could buy.
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More “Hitcher” Resources
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External Resources
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The 1960s Counterculture — Dive into the history of the decade (which informs the hitchhiker's character).
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"Blowin' in the Wind" — The classic Bob Dylan song quoted by the hitchhiker.
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Armitage's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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Armitage on Poetry — Watch a brief interview with Armitage in which he discusses his poetic philosophy, including the violence that appears in this poem.
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Armitage on Writing — Simon Armitage offers some advice for budding poets.
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Armitage's Official Website — Visit Armitage's website to learn more about his recent work.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Simon Armitage
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