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Havisham
The Poem
Analysis The alliteration on the ‘b’ creates a harsh sound – showing the violence of the poem. It also connects ‘beloved’ and ‘bastard’ as an oxymoron. This shows the persona's conflict – love and hate. A short, dramatic, and very powerful opening. 'Green' is the colour of jealousy; it shows the mind set of persona to whoever he left her for. ‘Pebbles’ are very hard, which shows what she feels like inside. The full stop is used for affect, to make ‘Spinster’ stands out and seem important. It tells us everything we need to know with one word. “yellowing” shows the age off the dress and that she’s aging with it. Although I can see why the writer has done this, to evoke the sound sense in creating complete and utter despair, in my opinion, it’s not that effective. It’s a clichéd image, and whereas yes, this can be seen as showing the persona’s mind set, to me it just seems more comical and thus breaking the mood of the poem. "her, myself, who did this / to me?" There’s an identity crisis. She no longer knows who is to blame. Dreaming of man and sex are when some nights are better. But ‘bite’ is a very violent word. She is being awaken back to the violence that is her life… (Perhaps that’s showing a reason why she was jilted in the first place?) It could also be her anger that she’s woken right at the best bit. Interestingly, she only called him ‘it’. She disassociates herself from him, showing again her hatred. Another’s oxymoron. It shows how she doesn’t trust love as it let her down. Also again, it shows her confusion – she's trapped between hating and loving him. She stabbed the cake when you’re supposed to cut it – a very strong image, capturing her rage. "Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon" She’s rather have him dead, then have nothing at all… (Sick, deranged come to mind) kinda like Salome… The heart isn’t the only thing broken. Here’s a visual example of her language (and thus her mind) being broken. Compares well with...
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Taylor. Site created: 10 April, 2006. Last revised:
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