Afternoons Flashcards
What themes are explored in Afternoons?
Time passing, Loss of innocence and growing up
Emptiness
Relationships and Identity
Change of seasons
What do the unrhymed stanzas and no fixed metrical pattern suggest?
Representation of uncertainty of lives of these families
Nature - Time passing quotes
Title ‘Afternoons’
‘summer is fading’
‘their beauty has thickened’
‘(But the lovers are all in school)’
Emptiness quotes
‘hollow’
‘assemble’
Relationships and Identity Quotes
An estateful of washing’
‘And the albums, lettered/Our Wedding (italics), lying/near the television’
‘Something is pushing them/To the side of their own lives’.
Change of Seasons Quotes
‘Summer is fading’
‘Before them, the wind/is ruining their courting-places’
‘summer is fading’
It is going away - but slowly
‘their beauty has thickened’
Beauty is fading in the mothers because of the frustration with their lives lack of fulfilment. The verb ‘thickened’ suggests change. The women have put on weight and not looked after themselves – their beauty of the past has congealed and is fading away.
‘(But the lovers are all in school)’
This line refers to future generations. The mothers are reflecting on what their children will be like when they are older, whether they will make the same mistakes that they did. The use of brackets a reminder to us that the mothers are thinking about something that hasn’t happened yet.
Title - Afternoons
It relates to a time of change
‘Summer is fading’
seasons gradually changing - time is moving on
‘fading’ - negative word - connotations of old age and shabbiness
‘Before them, the wind / is ruining their courting-places’
The assonance in ‘wind’ and ‘ruining’ creates a rueful and regretful sound. Wind is personified as a negative force and is a metaphor for time: the passing of time is ruining their memories and changing things beyond their control.
fading
Summer is fading
thickened
their beauty has thickened
lovers
(But the lovers are all in school)
