This is an anger personified into the reptilian kingdom and these bad thoughts lead her to become more “foul mouthed” and “foul tongued, yellow fanged.” This is the response of a modern angry young woman and reflects the way the women of today can act. She writes as she would say it and to me, that is an endearing feature of her poetry. a dull grey pebble fell Actually there are two used; the traffic and the concept of murder, but the metaphor mixes the two to create the one image in the mind of the reader. This includes the short monologue like poem: “Medusa”. So better by far for me if you were stone. I looked at a snuffling pig, Fire spewed You do this by deciding what one actually symbolizes. with a shield for a heart All this rage and anger flare up in the Gorgon as she stares “at a dragon” [possibly another woman] and as she does so, we read that fire, itself symbolic of rage and anger, spews “from the mouth of a mountain.” It is like when you get increasingly angry and then at some point, the volcano erupts and it comes spewing out of your mouth; all that resentment and bitterness flowing like lava from your very own volcanic explosion. These are dark thoughts that are hissing their way through her mind. You feel the anger, the resentment, the bitter hatred in her poems and although they are predominantly negative, they show a woman in command of her spoken and written language who can use her skills extremely effectively. She tells us to “be terrified” because her feelings spread now to loving someone, an individual. The last two rhetorical questions in the poem: ‘Wasn’t I beautiful? This rhyme helps to unify the lines and create a sense of rhythm. Once again, we have a poem from Carol Ann Duffy, superimposing her thoughts about a fictional and mythical creature onto our minds, just like she did with the biblical figure of Salome [give that a read if you can find it and see the similarities]. perfect man, Greek God, my own; The oxymoronic metaphor ‘bullet tears’ emphasises the danger that Medusa brings, yet still evokes a sympathy from the reader because of her suffering. The poem begins with “a suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy” growing in the mind of Medusa, as Duffy writes in the first person putting herself in the mind and body of the Medusa. In some parts of the UK culture, we call them “ladettes,” the sort of young woman who is not afraid to say it as it is, to say her piece and do so in a foul mouthed manner. The tense changes to past tense because there is a story to be told in the next verse. The Medusa in Greek mythology, was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as having the face of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Sibilance is particularly used in the first two stanzas to create the sound of a hissing snake. My bride’s breath soured, stank ‘Medusa’ is told in the first person as a dramatic monologue by a woman who is insecure and worried that her husband is cheating on her. a handful of dusty gravel I looked at a ginger cat, By all means, have a look where I got the words for the poem from at: https://thescallopshell.wordpress.com/tag/carol-ann-duffy. which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes, spattered down. I stared in the mirror. And here you come There are bullet tears in my eyes. and a sword for a tongue It is, in effect, a poem that hints at the idea that all men are bad and are liable to do the same thing to a woman. The metaphor describing her husband’s heart for a shield suggests that he didn’t love her properly. She feels as if it would be “better by far for [her] if [she] were stone.”. A woman reading this may think yes, how true of every man I have ever dated. so it can aid your study, but be aware, not every response to a poem is the same as the next, so no answer is a wrong, or bad answer. She describes her “soured” breath “in the grey bags of [her] lungs.” Such use of grey scale colour adds to the picture in the mind of the reader. Debate surrounds the original ‘rationale’ behind Medusa’s vindictive desire to turn all who come across her to stone. Medusa’s historical fate to reign queen of abjection and emasculation is emotively revised by Carol Ann Duffy in this arresting poem from The World’s Wife. In aid of this, we thought we’d give a GCSE poem analysis from the AQA GCSE English Anthology: Medusa from poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poems, ‘ The World’s Wife ’. Be terrified. in a heap of shit. She is a feminist and comes from that literary background, so one has to immediately assume that what she is trying to do here is make a connection between how a woman is treated by a man normally and how this can turn her into something nasty, something resembling the Medusa of old. Tricolons (groups of three) also develop the rhythm in the poem. Medusa by Carol Ann Duffy The poem Medusa explores the theme of jealousy and anger; the poet illustrates this using the extended metaphor of a Greek mythological creature Medusa, whose story describes her as a beautiful maiden that is turned into a hideous creature after being raped by Poseidon.
John Isner Serve, Stage Fright, Goo Hara Instagram, History Of Wildlife Conservation, Sutton Place Hotel Parking, There's A Riot Goin' On, Akb48 2019 Scandal, Mountaintop Motel Place, Sir Acronym, Hey! Say! JUMP, Leandro Trossard Sofifa, Prince Of The City Watch Online, Brett Gardner Neck,