The Man With The Night Swears

Question 1

Who is the author

Answer 1

Thom Gunn

Question 2

What’s the context?

Answer 2

1. In 1987, within 5 weeks, 4 of his friends died of AIDS
2. “AIDS elegies”

Question 3

What’s the content?

Answer 3

Speaker of Gunn’s elegiac dramatic monologue, a man infected w AIDS narrates his experience of ISOLATION and dying in his “clinging sheet”

Question 4

What’s the interpretation of the poem

Answer 4

1. Creates an eerie paradox of life and death
2. Echoes of speaker’s joyful, romantic and sexual past are undercut by his awareness of BODILY CORRUPTION and inevitability of death
3. Indicates the futility of any attempt to “shield” himself: his despair will only be ended by death

Question 5

What person is it in and what’s the effect

Answer 5

1st person - dramatic monologue - haunting sense of isolations
- sense of betrayal and broken certainty

Question 6

What done does this set?

Answer 6

ELEGIAC TONE - AIDS elegy transposed from mourner to dying man: an expression of grief inhabiting role of dying man