Originally Flashcards
“red room”
The metaphor ‘red room’ compares their mode of transport to a red-coloured room, very much a child’s perspective - probably a car.
- Red has connotations of passion or anger, perhaps reflecting her own feelings about being forced to leave the city of her birth and early childhood.
“fell through the fields”
- The metaphor/alliteration fell through the fields, from a child’s point of view, creates the impression of going downhill, perhaps going south and she cannot control it.
“our mother singing our fathers name to the turn of the wheels”
- Mother’s optimistic mood contrasts with the obvious negativity of Duffy
- Ambiguous – is she praying or is the children’s father missing? Or is he there with them?
“My brothers cried… bawling”
(italics)
- The sound images ‘My brothers cried’ and ‘bawling’ create a contrast with their mother’s singing, highlighting the degree of their upset.
- Effective word choice to convey the strength of feeling.
“As the miles rushed back to the city”
Word choice and alliteration - a sense of speed/things happening out of her control, can also be portrayed by personification.
- She wants to go back
“stared.”
“holding its paw.”
- This conveys the insecurity + apprehension of a young child, seeking comfort in a beloved toy; that she ‘stared at the toy suggests her uncertainty and apprehension.
- Symbolic of the situation they are in – heading into the unknown
“All childhood is an emigration”
- The declarative first sentence of the second verse - ‘All childhood is an emigration’ - signals the older persona reflecting on the nature of childhood.
- This involves the progress from one stage to another in the process of maturing.
- The image is both kinetic - she has moved countries - and metaphorical - she is growing up, and her personality, attitudes, emotions, and physical appearance are changing.
“Some are slow, leave you standing, resigned, up an avenue where no one you know stays.”
- The use of contrast indicates the two types of change: some are ‘slow’, an idea reinforced by the long sentence structure.
“Others are sudden. Your accent wrong.”
Then, by contrast, the short abrupt sentences reflect that some changes are abrupt.
- ‘Your accent wrong’ - communication and acceptance are much more complex than merely speaking the same language.
“Corners which seem familiar, leading to unimaginable pebble-dashed estates.”
Her sense of confusion and not belonging is again reinforced.
“parent’s anxieties stirred like a loose tooth in my head.”
- Just as a loose tooth is annoying, as because we can’t help prods it with our tongue, because we are conscious that it is always there, so too her ever-present awareness of her ‘parents’ anxieties’ keeps disturbing her.
“you forget or don’t recall, or change”
- Lists same idea for emphasis of change being difficult to pinpoint/define
“a skelf of shame”
The metaphor suggests that she no longer feels such disgrace or embarrassment at the change in him.
- Scottish dialect is still with her, just like a splinter, something small but it sticks under your skin, just as memories of her former life continue to trouble her.
“my tongue shedding its skin like a snake”
- Simile to convey the idea of change again, leaving the old behind and adapting to suit the new
- Despite these outward signs she has adapted, it is implied that she continues to feel out of place.
- The word choice ‘snake’ has undertones of deception:
- She is betraying her previous identity by accepting her new identity and becoming like the rest.
“Do I only think I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space and the right places?
- The question is in the form of a list, asking what it is she has lost.
- Aspects that gave her identity and a sense of self but since the list is in the fort of an unanswered question, she remains uncertain.
