Disgrace- Duffy Flashcards
About
- Speak up personified an extended metaphor for their relationship. The central conceit of this poem is A house taking on the characteristics of a disintegrating relationship becoming neglected and unloved as the relationship falls apart
-It is an extended form of pathetic fallacy
“ disgrace”
-duffy’s use of religious language and imagery the word should be taken to Me both fallen out of grace as in their religious sense of fallen away from the love of God
-Or as Duffy is an atheist falling out of the favour of a lover and having committed a sin for which you will be punished
Structure
-written in quatrains
-this dramatic monologue has an uneasy rhythm keeping with the fragment of the relationship
-At times the rhythm almost settles into a regular pattern of four beats to a line as in the first two lines here but loses its way
-As if following the dark thoughts of the persona.
“ but One day we woke to disgrace”
-opening media suggests the relationship has been disintegrating for some time but the realisation has come suddenly we woke
-frontier conjunction instantly created the feeling that the relationship has been declining for long before the poem has started
-Essentially the vault in the poem
-The plosive but emphasises the moment of the realisation in the relationship
-Our use of pronouns adds ambiguity to the poem and allows the relationship to mould to anybody
“Cold” “cyst”
The signs of the breakdown in the relationship are reflected on their house in a kind of pathetic fallacy
-The rooms are cold as they are towards each other
-The atmosphere of sorrow is thickening like dust on furniture and harden like a cyst a hard lump like a tumour
“ we have not been home in our hearts for months”
-playing on the idiom Home 😝 where the heart
- metaphor for the relationship
Show the gradual decline
-Reflects isolation felt by the persona ended in disappointment
“Dead flies in the web” “ how they stiffen and blackened”
-words are signifies of emotion and relationships and how they speak to each other has changed
-The loving words now hung lifeless in a web of deceit and lies becoming stiff and black like dead flies
-The deadly symbolises how the relationship may have trapped her and sucked the life out
-Constant themes of death and decay
-They are trapped in the relationship and drained. The idiom of a web of lies shows the spider and its prey has no hope in inevitability of nature and that love will be overruled by a more powerful force swallowing them up.
“Like a corpse”
Simile of the clothes on the floor like a corpse because the person that wears them has gone like the spirit leaving the body
“ deaths of lightbulbs”
-it seems to mean the lightbulbs are going out making a noise which resonates with her all day
-The sound like teardrops falling
-Old-fashioned lightbulbs failed much more regular than they do now so it’s possible that it’s the pinging noise they made when they failed that she is recalling
“ would not do”
-shows a couple are self-destructive
-The relationship spiring downwards as indicated by the enchantment next to the stanza
“ untouched” “ grace”
-grace is also said for a meal to give thanks for
-It’s clear from what she sees there was no grace said before this meal
-It is untouched like a painting of a meal but all the wine has been drunk and a lot of cigarettes smoked signify their anxiety and lack of harmony
“Sullen”
-The kitchen has become swollen sulking because these two people no one enjoy eating together in it
-The fridge even seems unwilling to give up its food maybe because it’s empty no one having bothered to shop
-even the environment is complicit in the slow unyielding decay brought by time
-Reinforcing the pervasive impact of time on every day life
“ rotten to the core”
-It’s a metaphor for the now destroyed relationship
-Shows the views on how love this relationship relationships are not worth it like eating a rotten apple is not worth
-It will only bring pain and disappointment
-Their rottenness is symbolic of their relationship
“ lame shoes” “ the telephone pressing it is to distant invisible lips”
— is a bitter joke
-Shoes are made for walking but these are odd shoes missing the other half just like their relationship
-One or the other of them is always walking away from the house so all one of them here is when they call Home 😝 is the answering machine which seems to be the only thing to watch either of them is saying
“Garden bowing its head’
-The garden also takes an air of dejection the flowers drooping in sympathetic sorrow as they see the outlines of the wearing couple against the lighted window
“ house plants trembling in their brittle soil” “total/disgrace”
-shows they have been left on watered they tremble with the force of the air caused by the slam of the door
-But it is also pathetic fallacy as a trembling fear by the battle raging around them
-The end is near signified by total at the end of the line leading to disgrace bring in the multiple uses of the word together in one
“ to stand at the window” “ faithless” “unpentinent “
-Standing by the window looking into the night the persona recalls the years that I’ve led them to this point where their faith or trusting each other has gone and they do not care
“ nursing thickening cyst”
Cacophony creates a pathetic fallacy sharing a building once flourishing with memories is now decaying with anguish and regret
-The adjective, sickening cyst evokes these of loneliness a physical reminder of the issues within the relationship and it’s failure that the partners denied until the feelings become undeniable
“ thickening cyst of dust and gloom” “our words changed” ‘ dead” “blackened”
-Thickening symbolises the passing of time and the relationship has been crumbling over a long period hatred is growing
-The noun cyst shows the relationship has become a hollow and disgusting and its problems carry on growing assist is an abnormality that shouldn’t be there reflecting feelings of unease
— the imagery highlights the idea that time not only alters the physical space of our lives but also corrupts language and relationships a scene when our words changed and became dead or blackened
“ cherished italics suddenly sour on our tongues obscenities sprained themselves in a wall in my head”
-cherished Juster poses of obscenities and suggests foul use of language in an argument
-Reflecting feelings of disappointment and the verb spraying creates a wild
-They are violating their home and by themselves uncontrollably
“ the still life of a meal”
-Duffy and morphosis of the kitchen in the fifth stanza to reflect unsustainable relationship
-The enjoyment of the still life meal suggests loss of communication as they aren’t eating together
-The enjoyment reinstating that this is a recurring thing
-Reflects how the relationship is unstable and like of energy it shows how the partners are satisfied
Antithesis of” wine bottle empty” and” ashtray full”
-They’ve turned to destructive aids to deal with pain predictably of humans to do the wrong easy thing than the right harder thing this is what has brought on the pain
