Eat Me Flashcards
What form is the poem in?
Dramatic monologue
What is the poem about?
A food fetish and the relationship between feeder and feedee - toxic
What themes are there in the poem?
Consequences of abuse, relationships, power, control, emotional harm and gender
What is the title an intertextual reference to?
Alice in Wonderland - foreshadowing the tone of the poem - infantalising the victim
‘When I hit thirty’
Pun/polysemic - 1. the woman’s age 2. the weight she is
‘three layers of icing, home-made’
Shows extreme effort, connotes nurture/care
‘a candle for each stone in weight’
juxtaposition - the idea that the woman is being lovingly nurtured?
‘icing was white but the letters were pink’
Colour imagery connotes purity perhaps suggest partner’s act of making a cake is a genuine kindness but the contrast alongside the argument marker shows tainted intentions
‘EAT ME’
Imperative/clipped syntax reveals controlling power dynamic
‘And I ate/ did what I was told’
monosyllabic language shows speaker obeying/subservient to commands with ease either surrending 1. her desire to eat 2. submission to man. end stop shows no question of obeying/feeders control
‘he’
Repetition of ‘he’ pronoun - he holds power and action
‘bed’ ‘broad’ ‘belly’
plosive alliteration - harsh/aggressive instruction/ desire
‘judder like a juggernaut’
simile - woman is objectified via male gaze - takes sexual pleasure from her body
‘the bigger the better’
demotic language - informal/casual tone about damaging nature of their relationship
‘girls’
repetition of pronoun (detached) - stripping women of their individual identities - instead they are one amorphous group
‘big girls, soft girls, girls I can burrow inside/ with multiple chins, masses of cellulite’
asyndetic listing- emphatic of the extent of his fetish - objectification
‘I was his Jacuzzi. But he was my cook’
Metaphor for roles in relationship - food = necessity jacuzzi = unnecessary luxury - tamed for pleasure
‘forbidden fruit’
smooth alliterative - passive acceptance of the pattern of life, reference to sin/temptation
‘desert island’ ‘beached whale’ ‘tidal wave’
hyperbolic metaphors - lead to dramatic climax, repetition emphatic of her powerlessness and resignation of position
‘too fat’ x4
anaphoric repetition - emphatic of her powerlessness, awareness of situation
‘dying sentence out’
pun - 1.court of law deciding his fate 2. literally killing him
‘nothing else left in the house to eat’
duel meaning - 1.she is empty without him/diminished 2.she has eaten him
