The other country represents freedom and pleasure, England is unattractive and oppressive. She imagines, perhaps putting in details of pleasant memories of her past, the simple pleasures of living and working there for many years.
The structure of the poem, four stanzas with six lines in each is controlled but informal — much like the tone of the pleasant daydream. She finishes by returning to the scene at her desk in England.
The second person pronoun and therefore point of view allows a personal and also a general connection with the idea of dreaming a better life. It is written in the present tense which makes it very immediate, as though it is really happening. The first stanza is concerned with leaving a pretty miserable life in England. The imagination is a weird place where both could be true at the same time. There may even be a pleasurable pun on the word sun and The Sun newspaper.
The first lovely day of the visit ends with a delightfully unusual description of the foreign moon. This is a place of simplicity and innocence; a world away from our complicated, technologically dependent, unromantic lives. Is it a drawing she remembers from childhood? In this third stanza, Duffy imagines living and working in this other country, which becomes somehow mingled with her own past life.
Sleep — this signals the beginning of a new day. The pace is picked up by this monosyllabic summary of the night. A flute — a list of images of beautiful sounds; life is so good.
In the final stanza, Duffy shows how temporary the daydream really is; the scene becomes confused then reality quickly returns. This repeated with the phrase lost but not lost — typical feelings in a dream.
But the swans are disappearing as the dream is about to do. There are also many short sentences — some of only one word. All this makes the poem seem conversational and not artificial. There is the chic fashion of vintage clothing — often amongst the welleducated. Of course — the repetition of this when outlining her life makes her quite ordinary in many ways.
She lived like you do — a suggestion that we, too, live on the edge of madness, that we may be in danger of becoming delusional, of fantasising like her. We all pursue a variety of unfulfilled dreams, shown by the metaphor — a dozen slack rope. They are all unreliable frayed — not neat and tidy. We try to cling on to the past — memory — and pull ourselves forward with dreams of a brighter future — hope.
But the pessimistic image - tugging uselessly — means that it is all a 10 waste of time. But the word standing out from the italics of her stories emphasises that she is Rotten at convincing others. Hyperbole, falsehood, fiction, fib — a list of four alternative words for lie; the list goes on and on, just like her lies; however, they make a dull evening interesting — shown by the metaphor pebbles tossed into a flat pool.
She spoke in subtitles. Not on. From bad to worse — the final stanza might show how her delusions became ever more melodramatic. Because of the line You know the rest I think that this may have actually happened and been reported in the paper or on the news. She may have really abducted the stolen child, was taken away in an ambulance, tried by the judge in the long white wig.
Being sadly confused, she was obviously unfit to plead guilty or not guilty, so she is assessed by a top psychiatrist in gaol. The last line of the poem, however, is unbelievably weird, which makes it quite comical that may just be Sammy, again ; what the psychiatrist does every night to the Princess of Wales is left deliberately unclear and seems quite sinister.
This is the type of sexual story that a delusional paranoid schizophrenic would make up…or is it really true? This is a dramatic monologue, in which the narrator is supposed to be a character from an event recorded in The Bible who is not even mentioned in the story; Duffy gives us the view of a woman whose voice has never been heard. The title Mrs Lazarus is one of the many anachronisms in the poem and shows that we have a modern take on the ancient tale. Duffy uses poetic licence to increase the length of time between his death and revivification in order to make his wife's remarriage more credible.
In the first stanza, she tells of how, a long time ago, she observed a decent period of mourning and followed all the protocols associated with widowhood. Gutted the place…suits into black bags — short, sharp, brisk sentences to show her getting on with the horrible but necessary task and completing it quickly. It covers the long period after his death when her memory of him gradually begins to fade a little. The fourth verse has Lazarus vanishing even further from her immediate thoughts.
The will was read — Lazarus legally does not exist. Even if comes back all of his property will have gone. See — there is a plea for understanding and empathy with her position in this situation. In verse five, Lazarus has completely disappeared and it is time for his wife to rebuild her life. She begins a relationship with another man, but it is all very respectable and not at all scandalous. Then he was gone — a collocation, the culmination of the going, going…of stanzas three and four. Lazarus is very definitely dead and never to be a part of her life any more.
The sixth stanza shows Mrs Lazarus as completely recovered from her grief and able to begin appreciating life again in the world. The end of the stanza, however, contains tension — something very dramatic has occurred that will affect her. The metaphor of the shawl conveys warmth and comfort, the internal rhyme of healed and field suggests peace and recovery of her sanity.
H er attention is needed for some important event or emergency. We see her in an impossible predicament. The villagers seem to take delight in her situation as they simply see the event as sensational. In The Bible, everyone was delighted that Lazarus had risen from the dead; Duffy describes his resurrection with horrifying diction and absolutely no mention of Jesus.
He lived — a brief, direct, blunt, shocking summary of what had happened. This is perhaps a grimly ironic reference to the idea of the jaws of death. Lazarus is definitely not looking at his best. A cuckold is a man whose wife has been unfaithful to him…but she has been asking us to understand her situation, and we probably do!
Jesus has not done him - or anybody else - any favours; he does not belong to this time, he has become an anachronism. He was better off dead. Nostalgia is a sad longing for the past, the good old days. Duffy creates a legend, an enigmatically timeless, universal tale, in which the term nostalgia was first created. An unknown narrator tells a doctor how people left home for a better standard of living in a foreign land as economic migrants. They began to feel that their environment was wrong for them, and they felt alienated.
One interpretation of this poem is that it is a metaphor for ageing: growing up and looking back on your past, yearning for the glory days of your youth which can never be repeated. This inevitably leads to a sense of loss, and a sense of your own mortality… The first stanza describes the people leaving home in search of money; their lives feel wrong and they begin to suffer.
It has become derogatory term for people whose only concern is making money. The coins are clenched in their teeth implying that they had to bite them to test their authenticity — they could not trust their foreign employers. We can easily visualise the narrator placing their hand on their chest, over their heart.
This appears to be melodramatic hyperbole, but it is fairly common for people to die of emotional stress. Humans think in words, even if those thoughts are about emotions.
It may be Scots leaving the mountains for the flat English plains — music can be very evocative of another time, another place. It was spring — a time for new beginnings, fresh life and hope.
Ironically, the returner does not find any of this in his old home. He is the one who has changed, perhaps, because of his travels, his contact with the bigger wider world. He sees his home from a different perspective. It is a dramatic monologue in which Duffy creates a rather strange, disturbing character. A persistent, unrepentant, possibly psychotic thief speaks about the most unusual thing they no gender is given have ever stolen — a snowman.
They mention other activities and items which they have stolen, before returning to the snowman, an action which they found ultimately disappointing. They seem to be alienated, antisocial and bitter with a sadistic streak. However, despite their unnerving psychopathology, they do not seem to be a physical threat to anybody. Some even see them as comical. The title, Stealing 15 has other connotations— it also means moving quietly and stealthily so nobody notices you creeping around.
The first stanza suggests an interview of some kind with the thief describing the theft of the snowman. The most unusual thing I ever stole? A snowman — a very unexpected answer, which may cause an amused reaction; this person is seems very odd already! Midnight — sums up the scene in a single word: the witching hour; an image of darkness— a suitable time for evil deeds.
No interaction with it except on physical level - suggests narrator's social difficulties. The simile shows both their minds as ice - cold minded, indifferent, uncaring of people's reactions to their actions - an archetypal psychopath. I started with the head — this disturbing decapitation, even of an inanimate object, sounds brutally sadistic. The second stanza develops their antisocial, cruel characteristics with them wanting to cause distress to innocent children.
He weighed a ton - Huge effort to steal something that has no monetary worth. Thank you! Published by Herbert Glenn Modified over 5 years ago. Write your own summary of the poem at the top of the page. You can ask me ONE question to help your understanding of the poem…. Who is the woman in the poem? How does the tone of the poem shift as it goes on?
Why is the psychiatrist significant? Why is the poem called Liar? But it is also about how we judge people and whether we have the right to judge them. What connotations do we have with the word liar? How is this word different to the first four words of the poem? What is shocking about the first and second line? What does this tell us about her personality? What does she have to do in the mirror?
What does this tell us about her life? The question in line 2 suggests she is talking to someone. How do we normally view rope? How is the rope presented here? What does this tell us about the liar? What are the ripples referring to? Stanza 4 1. What major event occurs in this stanza? What has her lying led to?
How is the judge similar to the liar in line 21? How is the doctor delusional? What does this suggest about judging others? We are even spoken to directly by the poet in line Why does Carol Ann Duffy do this? Task Are we right to judge others? Hour Carol Ann Duffy To learn about the. Salome Carol Ann Duffy Id done it before. By Carol Ann Duffy By studying this poem. How do Carol Ann Duffy and Shakespeare convey.
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