One Flesh

Question 1

“Lying apart now, each in a separate bed”

Answer 1

Jennings uses a semantic field of isolation “lying apart… separate” to suggest that the couple is slowly losing love and growing apart, creating a bitter tone at the start of the poem.

Question 2

“Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion”

Answer 2

Jennings exemplifies the speakers parent’s loss of love through the phrase “former passion”, suggesting that there is a lack of a physical relationship between the two parents.

Question 3

“Of having little feeling - or too much”

Answer 3

Jennings juxtaposes “little feeling” with “too much” to suggest that a perfecting love relationship can’t exist and there will be inevitably be a loss of love between partners.

Question 4

“Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?”

Answer 4

Jennings emphasises the fading relationship between the speakers parents and how that has worried the speaker, the use of the question mark suggests that the speaker feels lost without the familiar relationship between there parents.