Eat me - Patience Agbabi Flashcards
Title
- a potential reference to Alice in Wonderland links to the fantasy of the man trying to grow his partner
- imperative, suggests the speaker is a submissive character
- extended metaphor - for mental and emotional abuse, between speaker and partner and relationship with food
‘When I hit thirty, he bought me a cake,
three layers of icing, home-made’
contrast between ‘hit’ and ‘home - made’ highlights the destructive nature of domestic abuse
‘The icing was white but the letters were pink’
‘White’ represents purity and femininity in contrast with a dangerous and controlling motivation behind the cake
‘Then he asked me to get up and walk
round the bed so he could watch my broad
belly wobble, hips judder like a juggernaut.’
- teasing tone shows degrading and objectification of his partner for sexual gratification
‘walk’ ‘broad’ ‘juggernaut’ - all three rhyme through assonance of ‘awh’
‘The bigger the better’
alliteration
‘inside
with’
enjambment
‘multiple chins, masses of cellulite.’
the semantic field of gigantic objects - hyperbole of objectification
‘rush of fast food,’
- alliteration
- the pleasure the woman receives is a short-lived, unhealthy relationship, could relate to an unhealthy addiction
‘swell like forbidden fruit.’
- simile
- biblical allusion which foreshadows death
‘shipwreck’ ‘beached whale’ ‘craving a wave’ ‘tidal wave’
semantic field/ lexical set of the sea - something large, helpless and abandoned
‘too fat’
Anaphora, repetition of phrase
‘chubby, cuddly, big-built’
Euphemisms for fat, language used by society because of the negative connotations associated
‘The day I hit thirty-nine’
- could link to age or a persons weight
‘His flesh, my flesh flowed.’
syntactic parallelism - which evolves the sense of intimacy and reliance of sex
‘Soon you’ll be forty… he whispered’
ambiguity of the sexual connections of whispering, but also the danger and secrecy of abuse
‘I drowned his dying sentence out.’
- alliteration
- sea imagery, the speaker takes control
‘There was nothing else left in the house to eat.’
- she can now provide for herself
- a sense of loss, reached what she could tolerate
- ambiguous and sinister line
Overall messages
- the sexual nature of their relationship is a taboo subject which could reflect social discomfort
- the idea of a man overpowering a woman to continue with control over her, reversed at the end - suggesting a shift in the power dynamic
- body image mainly considered female, reflects societal attitudes. the death of the abuser highlights a shift in stereotypical views surrounding body image.
Notes
- the speaker is part of an abusive relationship to satisfy his sexual appetite
- tone is dark, sinister - corresponds with the theme of abuse
Structure
- consists of 10 tercets - highlights the strict regime the speaker is put through
- in the form of a dramatic monologue
- each stanza follows the form of half/assonant rhyme. indication of the unhealthy nature of the relationship
- written in free verse
