eat me - patience agbabi

Question 1

ten tercets

Answer 1

mirrors the man, woman and food

imbalance of power - man has more

symbolises constant ritualistic feeding schedule

Question 2

enjambment

Answer 2

inescapable cycle of abuse

never stops eating

man believes power is eternal

Question 3

caesura

Answer 3

mimics how trapped the speaker is

strict routine the speaker has to follow

obeying commands

Question 4

meter

Answer 4

stanza 1- tetrameter

stanza 2 - pentameter

stanza 3 - hexameter

reflects how her consumption of food is increasing

Question 5

title

Answer 5

imperative - sets the undertone of the rest of the poem

conforms to the patriarchy - submissive character

allusion to alice in wonderland - eats cake and grows large - doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into

alice in wonderland is fantasy - women are forced to live up to almost unrealistic expectations

Question 6

‘when i hit thirty, he brought me a cake’

Answer 6

‘hit’ has connotations of violence

begins with temporal deixis

‘cake’ contrasts violence - connotes celebration

Question 7

‘three layers of icing, home-made’

Answer 7

intentional - knows what he’s doing - typical abusive trait

‘home-made’ - made with love and care which is ironic, connotes comfort, knows what’s in it

Question 8

‘the icing was white, but the letters were pink’

Answer 8

‘white’ connotes innocence - is he trying to make out that he’s innocent?

‘but’ - disjunction shows lack of connection between the people

‘pink’ connotes femininity, typically younger girls - infantilising her, emphasising his control

red and white make pink - blood stained purity

Question 9

‘and i ate. did what i was told. didn’t even taste it’

Answer 9

trained to obey - teach kids to obey

factual, perfunctory statement shows she’s used to it. eating is a chore, not something to enjoy - does it all for him -

get it over and done with

Question 10

‘then he asked me to get up and walk’

Answer 10

temporal deixis - ‘then’

entertainment purposes to satisfy him

asked, didn’t make her -engrained in her mind to obey anyway - highlights the danger of abusive relationships

Question 11

‘broad belly wobble’

‘hips judder like a juggernaut’

Answer 11

alliteration - mimics her moving - emphasises unpleasant imagery

child like language

enjambment - movement of flesh

foreshadows the ending where abuser is crushed to death - reverse of strength and power

Question 12

‘the bigger the better’

Answer 12

echolalia

alliteration - doesn’t care about actions so he continues to do it

Question 13

‘big girls, soft girls, girls i can burrow inside’

Answer 13

‘soft’ - malleable, easily led

‘girls’ not women, infantilised

metaphor

‘burrow’ connotes animals seeking safety and comfort - what she is to him - just there to gratify him

alternatively drilling his authority into her

Question 14

‘i was his jacuzzi. but he was my cook’

Answer 14

metaphor

uses her purely for pleasure

she’s an inanimate object

she needs him to survive - dependent on abuser

she’s being exploited by him

Question 15

‘rush of fast food’

Answer 15

fricative alliteration emphasises the unhealthy relationship

fast food is bad like their relationship

her pleasure is short lived

Question 16

‘swell like forbidden fruit’

Answer 16

biblical reference to adam and eve - original sin - knows its wrong

cacophonic

Question 17

‘his desert island after shipwreck’

Answer 17

lost without her

can go to her after a bad day

semantic field of exotic items - sees her as a prize

simple sentence structure - affection limited to size

Question 18

‘beached whale on a king sized bed craving a wave’

Answer 18

metaphor

out of place

vulnerable and stuck - can’t escape abuse

‘craving’ shows her desire - she’s desperate

Question 19

‘i was a tidal wave of flesh’

Answer 19

metaphor for addiction

keep chasing it - comes and goes in waves

semantic field of water - creeping power - comes suddenly

water is symbolic of life and purity

Question 20

‘too fat to buy a pint of full fat milk,
too fat to use fat as an emotional shield,
too fat to be called chubby, cuddly, big-built’

Answer 20

anaphora - shows her hate for him, desire to escape

‘milk’ - child like imagery

she is powerless

addicted but no satisfaction

euphemism for obesity

Question 21

‘the day i hit thirty nine, i allowed him to stroke my globe of a cheek’

Answer 21

cyclical structure

hyperbole

she’s starting to gain power or is she passive?

Question 22

‘his flesh, my flesh flowed’

Answer 22

euphemism for sex

Question 23

‘open wide, poured olive oil down my throat’

Answer 23

imperative child like

assonant ‘o’ represents the shape of her mouth and choking

Question 24

‘soon you’ll be forty…he whispered’

Answer 24

tantalising her

loving manner which is ironic or the whisper he used to lull her into obedience

‘forty’ could also hyperbolise the length of time people suffer from abuse

Question 25

‘roll over on top’

Answer 25

gaining power

spatial deixis

roll - to flatten - wrecking his power

Question 26

‘i rolled and he drowned in my flesh. i drowned his dying sentence out’

Answer 26

the thing he created killed him - karma

taking power

semantic field of water

dying sentence’ is ironic - ‘sentence’ being ambiguous, as if she is a court of law deciding his fate

Question 27

‘six hours that felt like a week’

Answer 27

doesn’t know what to do with herself - dependent on him - needs time to adjust to freedom

time is tangible

Question 28

‘there was nothing left in the house to eat’

Answer 28

did she eat him?

‘nothing’ shows her emptiness - did she love him despite his behaviour?

she has freedom

Question 29

headlines

Answer 29

the dynamics of abusive relationships

the objectification of the female form

how power impacts on relationships

how relationships can consume one’s life

patriarchal dominance in domestic relationships

infantilisation to manipulate in relationships

the dangers of greed for power in relationships

people often don’t know how unhealthy their relationship is until they

struggles to escape abusive relationships

the dangers of being entrapped in relationships

the exploitation of the female body bey their male counterparts