Eat Me

Question 1

What form is the poem in?

Answer 1

Dramatic monologue

Question 2

What is the poem about?

Answer 2

A food fetish and the relationship between feeder and feedee - toxic

Question 3

What themes are there in the poem?

Answer 3

Consequences of abuse, relationships, power, control, emotional harm and gender

Question 4

What is the title an intertextual reference to?

Answer 4

Alice in Wonderland - foreshadowing the tone of the poem - infantalising the victim

Question 5

‘When I hit thirty’

Answer 5

Pun/polysemic - 1. the woman’s age 2. the weight she is

Question 6

‘three layers of icing, home-made’

Answer 6

Shows extreme effort, connotes nurture/care

Question 7

‘a candle for each stone in weight’

Answer 7

juxtaposition - the idea that the woman is being lovingly nurtured?

Question 8

‘icing was white but the letters were pink’

Answer 8

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

Question 9

‘EAT ME’

Answer 9

Imperative/clipped syntax reveals controlling power dynamic

Question 10

‘And I ate/ did what I was told’

Answer 10

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

Question 11

‘he’

Answer 11

Repetition of ‘he’ pronoun - he holds power and action

Question 12

‘bed’ ‘broad’ ‘belly’

Answer 12

plosive alliteration - harsh/aggressive instruction/ desire

Question 13

‘judder like a juggernaut’

Answer 13

simile - woman is objectified via male gaze - takes sexual pleasure from her body

Question 14

‘the bigger the better’

Answer 14

demotic language - informal/casual tone about damaging nature of their relationship

Question 15

‘girls’

Answer 15

repetition of pronoun (detached) - stripping women of their individual identities - instead they are one amorphous group

Question 16

‘big girls, soft girls, girls I can burrow inside/ with multiple chins, masses of cellulite’

Answer 16

asyndetic listing- emphatic of the extent of his fetish - objectification

Question 17

‘I was his Jacuzzi. But he was my cook’

Answer 17

Metaphor for roles in relationship - food = necessity jacuzzi = unnecessary luxury - tamed for pleasure

Question 18

‘forbidden fruit’

Answer 18

smooth alliterative - passive acceptance of the pattern of life, reference to sin/temptation

Question 19

‘desert island’ ‘beached whale’ ‘tidal wave’

Answer 19

hyperbolic metaphors - lead to dramatic climax, repetition emphatic of her powerlessness and resignation of position

Question 20

‘too fat’ x4

Answer 20

anaphoric repetition - emphatic of her powerlessness, awareness of situation

Question 21

‘dying sentence out’

Answer 21

pun - 1.court of law deciding his fate 2. literally killing him

Question 22

‘nothing else left in the house to eat’

Answer 22

duel meaning - 1.she is empty without him/diminished 2.she has eaten him