Eat Me poem analysis: structure, language and tone

POEMS

Eat Me - Structure and Language : MAIN

• Strong stanza - 10 tercets 3 lines
• Dramatic monologue
• Half rhymes - cake & weight = uncertainty + claustrophobia
• LANGUAGE
• Personal pronouns - follows orders whilst she is thinking about herslef
• Tercet in italics - dialogue from husband expressing his dominant personality.
• "Soft girls" - he can mold them - "His" objectifying the woman
• Narrative voice - alliteration and repetition combined
• "cuddly" instead of "fat" - Euphamism
• "I ate it, did as I was told. Didn't even taste it"
• Constant end-stopped lines on final line of each stanza--> routine.

IMAGERY + TONE

• WATER IMAGERY - "His desert island after a shipwreck." Or "a beached whale on a king-sized bed craving a wave" - Water is able to change. She is no strengh in character - hidden bowers.
• "tidal wave of flesh" forshadows the end
• contrast of body sizes w/ metaphor "my globe of a cheek"
• Obesity - "Bigger the better"
• TONE
• Submissive and melancholy. - never tell anyone how she felt = provoking sympathy
• Final few tercets include personal pronouns highlighting the change in tone as the woman gains more control - gets her own back.

MAIN QUOTES

• " I like big girls, soft girls" - objectifying
• - Using for his pleasure
• - Rep of "girls" can also be seen as patronizing the woman - showing her vulnerability
• " My only pleasure the rush of fast food" - "rush" pleasure is short lived
• - alliteration "fast food" = unhealthy the relationship is - physical and mental
• - "fast food" unhealthy addiction
• "Nothing else left in the house to eat" - Ends on an ambiguous and sinister line - strong sense of uncertainty
• - Husband has sacrificed himself - for his pleasure
• - Shows her power
• MAIN THEMES: POWER
• GENDER

THE GUN - Structure and Language

• STRUCTURE:
• Single lines and 4 stanzas = 6-7 lines
• 2 singles lines where poet concentrates on impact of guns "Bringing a gun into a house changes it" and "A gun brings a house alive" - more poignant by not embedding them into the stanza
• Speaker's interpretaion
• Sinister
• LANGUAGE
• Alliteration/sibilance "slicing, stirring, tasting, stalking." = soft hissing
• Consonants 'f' creates harsh and abrupt sound - gunshot
• 's' creates hissing
• The semantic field of death and guns - reinforces destructive imagery "reek" "dangling" "dead"
• "spring" = positive and "innocent" sharp contrast

IMAGERY AND TONE

• IMAGERY
• "A gun brings a house alive" - physically/spiratually personified - cause damage
• Contast - guns kill
• Crave power with the gun
• TONE:
• Desire for power
• Relationship has held due to the gun
• Poets own personal experience

MAIN QUOTES

• "At first it's just practice:" - negative tone and sense of apprehension
• - sinister colon places at end ensures that a reader has time to consider death being inevitable.
• " like when sex was fresh" - animalistic tone
• - evoking images of raw meat - previous desctriptions of butchered animals.
• - power dynamics between individuals - Power
• " King of Death" - masculine power

ON HER BLINDNESS - Structure + Language

• STRUCTURE
• Repeated enjambment