Eat Me

Question 1

Structure

Answer 1

• Dramatic monologue - details a dominant male force-feeding his partner
• End of poem - signals power flip, she becomes dominant
• Alliteration - ‘j’ and ‘b’ sounds evoke speakers own roundness; ‘j’ sounds are assonant; picture of a jelly-like wobbling. ‘f’ sounds also draws attention to meaningful differences between speaker and partner’s experiences: ‘fast food’ vs ‘forbidden fruit’
• Form - 10 brief tercets: tight form, gives a tense + restrictive atmosphere -> control
• Setting: over roughly 10 years - 30th to 39th birthday -> compression of these years evokes the speaker’s sense that her life has been stolen, eaten up by her abusive partner.

Question 2

Agbabi

Answer 2

The speaker, though not the poet, is a voice for the many women who get trapped in abusive relationship. Her matter-of-fact tone makes it feel as though she is numb to his cruelty, describing awful moments in short, straight-forward lines.
Agbabi often looks at the dynamics of power and marginalisation in her poems, with her being well known for her performances with racial and sexual themes.

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

2008 poem; this decade’s major topic of discussion was male power over women’s bodies saw a rise in the appearance of female body in modern media. Sexualisation can lead to a lack of confidence with these bodies e.g. ED’s and depression -> negative effect on healthy development. These bodies creates abnormal standards for the average girl - the media limits girls values to their sexual appeal, causing them to obsess over it especially since the media focuses heavily on scrutinising the looks of women.
Teachings - relationships have complex dynamics that require communication, understanding of points of views, passions - ‘love yourself’

Question 4

‘The bigger the better…I like big girls, soft girls, girls I can burrow inside with multiple chins, masses of cellulite’

Answer 4

• Repetition of ‘girls’ -> dehumanises her, makes her seem like an object of consumption
• Sensory lang ‘soft’ ‘burrow inside’ -> unsettling contrast between affection and control
• Male partner’s perspective, objectifies female speaker by reducing her to her body size
• ‘The bigger the better’ -> reinforces power dynamic where the women’s increasing size benefits the mans desires rather than his own well-being

l.w -> ‘I was his jacuzzi’ -> transforms her into a functional object, emphasises her loss of agency and how her body exists for his pleasure

Question 5

‘Too fat to leave, too fat to buy a pint of full milk..’

Answer 5

• Repetition of ‘too fat’ emphasises the physical and psychological limitations imposed on the speaker, reinforcing her entrapment -> her size has become a cage
• ‘Too fat to leave’ -> her partners control has rendered her physically incapable of escaping, reinforcing the idea that her body has been weaponised against her
• ‘Milk’ -> irony, milk is a nurturing substance but here highlights her helplessness and dependence

Question 6

‘His pleasure, to watch me swell like forbidden fruit”

Answer 6

• ‘His pleasure’ - speakers subjugation -> clear that her body exists for his gratification, not her own autonomy; phrase suggests an imbalance where she is a passive object of desire rather than an active participant
• ‘Watch me swell’ - voyeurism and control; he consumers her growth visually -> ‘swelling’ =excess and unnatural expansion, themes of forced feeding and bodily restriction
• Biblical allusion - her body as a site of temptation, indulgence and moral transgression -> ironic though because her consumption is not self-driven but imposed on her by her partner - she is being punished for his desires, a common theme in discussions of patriarchal control over women’s bodies.