eat me - patience agbabi Flashcards
ten tercets
mirrors the man, woman and food
imbalance of power - man has more
symbolises constant ritualistic feeding schedule
enjambment
inescapable cycle of abuse
never stops eating
man believes power is eternal
caesura
mimics how trapped the speaker is
strict routine the speaker has to follow
obeying commands
meter
stanza 1- tetrameter
stanza 2 - pentameter
stanza 3 - hexameter
reflects how her consumption of food is increasing
title
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
‘when i hit thirty, he brought me a cake’
‘hit’ has connotations of violence
begins with temporal deixis
‘cake’ contrasts violence - connotes celebration
‘three layers of icing, home-made’
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
‘the icing was white, but the letters were pink’
‘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
‘and i ate. did what i was told. didn’t even taste it’
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
‘then he asked me to get up and walk’
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
‘broad belly wobble’
‘hips judder like a juggernaut’
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
‘the bigger the better’
echolalia
alliteration - doesn’t care about actions so he continues to do it
‘big girls, soft girls, girls i can burrow inside’
‘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
‘i was his jacuzzi. but he was my cook’
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
‘rush of fast food’
fricative alliteration emphasises the unhealthy relationship
fast food is bad like their relationship
her pleasure is short lived
‘swell like forbidden fruit’
biblical reference to adam and eve - original sin - knows its wrong
cacophonic
‘his desert island after shipwreck’
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
‘beached whale on a king sized bed craving a wave’
metaphor
out of place
vulnerable and stuck - can’t escape abuse
‘craving’ shows her desire - she’s desperate
‘i was a tidal wave of flesh’
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
‘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’
anaphora - shows her hate for him, desire to escape
‘milk’ - child like imagery
she is powerless
addicted but no satisfaction
euphemism for obesity
‘the day i hit thirty nine, i allowed him to stroke my globe of a cheek’
cyclical structure
hyperbole
she’s starting to gain power or is she passive?
‘his flesh, my flesh flowed’
euphemism for sex
‘open wide, poured olive oil down my throat’
imperative child like
assonant ‘o’ represents the shape of her mouth and choking
‘soon you’ll be forty…he whispered’
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
‘roll over on top’
gaining power
spatial deixis
roll - to flatten - wrecking his power
‘i rolled and he drowned in my flesh. i drowned his dying sentence out’
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
‘six hours that felt like a week’
doesn’t know what to do with herself - dependent on him - needs time to adjust to freedom
time is tangible
‘there was nothing left in the house to eat’
did she eat him?
‘nothing’ shows her emptiness - did she love him despite his behaviour?
she has freedom
headlines
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
