effects Flashcards
“chopping”
“slicing”
“scrubbing”
“washing”
various verbs indicating the constant physical labour of the mother
- traditional gender roles
“giving love the only way she knew”
generational differences
“hands […] always scarred”
the mothers suffering
- the guilt of the speaker
“they had taken off her rings”
- removed an aspect of her identity
- her identity is so tied to who she is married to
“she was his wife”
- gender roles
- mother trying to hold onto her own identity
“and not when came my turn came to cook for her”
- helplessness of the mother, loss of her identity
- reversal of gender roles
the son was once dependent on the mother
“stared unseeing at the television”
metaphor
- growing disconnection from reality
“heaved herself upright”
“blinked”
“poured”
“gulped”
“stared”
verbs indicating the growing helplessness and the deterioration of her life
“her way to be with him again”
loneliness, object is connected to her past identity as his wife
“the tv in the corner”
- the tv stands for the loss of her “real relationship”
- disconnect from reality
“dreamt of when she was a girl”
- the mother withdraws into the world of the past
“drown some poor sould moans and curses”
- dehumanising effects of old age
“all she wore on the hand i held”
- symbols of her identity have gone
- her identity has been stripped by time
rhyme pattern
irregular -> rhyming couplets
- full rhyme, symbolic of the unity between the son and mother
- not regular, indicating the speakers guilt
“the little bag of her effects to me”
- possessions indicating her identity
- sorrowful theme
