War photographer

- It is not a specific title and just talks about a hectic concept (war)
- The identity of the persona is unknown and no context is given

Themes, Content & Basic Ideas

● Cyclical routines of life, how they vary in peaceful countries versus war-stricken ones
● The contrast between the chaos of war and the neatness of war photography
● War being absorbed and eventually ignored by those not facing it
● Casual, deliberately mundane tone to display the contrasts between countries
● Tone is partly ironic, can be considered mocking at some point
● Guilt in going there and just idly standing and clicking away while people endure mass suffering that you
are not able to do anything about
○ Defamation/disrespect
● Indifference for the war victims
● The horrors of a war
● Having to detach from the world and job (alienation from society)

Tone
● Stanza 1: Near spiritual experience of developing photos; element of unknown because he hasn’t seen
what’s been clicked so far
● Stanza 2: Comparison, ​a sense of nostalgia coupled with horror and enforcement of a routine
○ ‘​Job​ to do’
○ ‘Home ​again’
○ ‘Ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel’
● Stanza 3: Photos start developing; recollection of terrible events and their occurrences near him. ​Guilt is
observed, hinting at ethical concerns of war photography
○ ‘Something is happening’: Dramatic lead-in, something out of the routine, serves as a volta
○ ‘What someone must’
● Stanza 4: Actual publishing of the photos and the casual reactions of the people and him leaving again;
‘Carousel keeps turning’
○ ‘Black or white’
○ ‘Earns his living’
● Overall there is a tone of bitterness by the persona towards those who do not realise the struggles of a war
photographer and the war
● There is a tone of anger as well as sorrow
Standing female nude
- The title describes what the persona in the poem is doing, and this is her job
- This is also a work of art/painting

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Cyclical, repetitive structure of making paintings
● Parallel between her life and the artists’
● Superficial nature of painting someone
● Objectification of women
● Nobody should do
● Construction of masculinity
● Inequality between the different social classes (Bourgeoisie vs Prostitute)
● Women in a patriarchal society
● Subversion of gender constructs

Tone
● Indifference
● Cynicism, satirically sarcastic
○ Six hours like this for a few francs: Poem starts off with a complaint, automatically highlights the
need for money especially because it’s mentioned
○ They tell me he’s a genius
■ Ironic because the poem then talks about them having sex
■ She had no interest in his kind of art and he doesn’t actually possess her
○ These artists take themselves too seriously
● Scornful towards the artist
Education for leisure
- The title talks about how education is only something one does in their free time
- Shows a sense of resentment or dislike towards education
- While education is a need, the title contrasts that idea and makes it seem like something one does to kill
time or in their free time
- Education only during boredom

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Main theme: Isolation and Neglection from society
● Shows the detrimental effects of the education system on a disaffected and deluded youth
● Failure of the education system
● Adopts the persona of a marginalized, ​enigmatic​, sociopathic, psychopathic, young man who has been
attacked and emotionally killed by the education system, later going on to kill someone
● Written to fit to a broader context
● The descriptions of the persona’s actions and thoughts (visual imagery)
● Strategic structuring to show the progressing negative attitudes of the persona

Tone
● Egoistical, maniacal, ​sadistic,​ chilling, enigmatic, suspense, overwrought
● Personality is slowly uncovered as tone goes from chillingly light/sociopathic to eerily psychopathic,
allowing for a gradual introduction into an intense personality
● “I touch your arm.” acts a cliffhanger for the poem, leaving it on a suspenseful tone. The first time usage of
“your” directly addresses the reader and elucidates the impression that the persona will come for them.
Similar to one of Robert Browning’s poems
● The desire to be noticed and paid attention to; childish
○ “I have had enough of being ignored”
○ “write my name”: Even though he knows it’s transitory, he writes his name because he wants to be
remembered, like Shakespeare
○ “I dial the radio” can be seen as a hunt for seconds of public fame ​or ​a call for help
○ Reinforced through delusions of grandeur
■ “I breathe out talent”
■ “I am a genius”
○ Imposing delusions onto others as a way to generate self-importance and self-relevance
■ “They don’t appreciate my autograph.”
■ “The cat knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.” is actually self-preservation by the
cat
○ Murderous tendencies come from a lack of attention, and is a way of restoring power
Head of English
- The title makes a generalised statement (Unidentified persona)
- Mysterious and not precise
- Makes the reader think, what the poem might be about due to a simple title

Basic Themes and Ideas:

● Control over a group of students and their ability to think or act freely
● Resistance to change: Political/social/literary
● Satirical monologue because satire was a good alternative at the time to real criticism, especially of the
powerful or vainglorious
● Traditional views of poetry
● Authoritarian teacher
● Duffy talks about how poetry is more than the traditional elements and schools are teaching it wrong

Tone:
● Brusque
● Overly confident
● Pompous
● Switches between amusing and commanding as to be controlling but not noticeably so
● Controlling:
● Partly jealous
● Pedagogical
● Patronizing
● Dismissive
● Didactic
● Dismissive: Trying not to praise the person while bragging about their own achievements
● Impossibly archaic
Selling Manhattan
- A commentary on the colonisation
- The purchase of Manhattan

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Isolation and estrangement of Native Americans
● Duffy highlights an unspoken-about perspective and establishes that emotional and spiritual attachments to
land should be held higher in importance than mere physical invasion
● Animism: The religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence;
anthropomorphism
● Monetary valuation on something they consider invaluable; Peter Minuit getting Manhattan in 1626
● Deconstruction of the loss of spiritual identity
● Connection that natives have to the planet and Earth

Tone
● Accusatory
● Emotional and guilting
● Contrast between the coloniser and colonised, between the defeated-yet-wise way of life and the brutal,
harsh way of the coloniser
● Bitter
● Derogatory
● Switches halfway through the poem from semi-doubtful to assured; Soft sentences → Imperatives →
Rhetorical questioning
● Becomes more and more saddened throughout
Deportation
- The title has negative connotations because deportation is very painful and harsh upon people
- Talks about forceful abandonment by a country to a civilian
- Tries to draw empathy to the immigrant’s struggles of hopelessness
- Might not come

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Dramatic monologue
● Foreigner’s life as he struggles to survive in a new country; aims to find a job with hopes to send money
back to his family, residing in their home country
● Misses his lover and struggles to be apart from her but has no choice
● Changing homes
● Migration and its effects
● Isolation and alienation from society
● Stranded in a foreign system
● Not being able to fit in a foreign nation and having to live like an outsider

Tone
● Curt: Officials
● Hurt: How they were treated as parts of a routine/system and not individuals with interests & features of
their own
● Distraught and cold (in tone) towards the end by using brief, simple sentences
● Hypothetical tense to imply a possible future, one that did not occur: This further adds to the impact of a
forgotten future and overcome dreams
Stealing
- The title creates a sense of mystery and thought into the reader's mind
- Unemployment in the UK and why people end up stealing
- One word makes it seem like the rest of the words got stolen and isolated
- There is no importance given to the title because it's just one adjective by itself which does not give any
context to the readers
- Creates a universal effect (everyone does it, and it happens it to everyone)
- We might associate it with men, but it’s a woman in this case. She lets us decide for ourselves

Basic Themes & Ideas

● An insight into the inner thoughts of the persona
● Dramatic monologue
● The persona is lonely and unemotional
● Effects of kleptomania (addiction to stealing)
● Theme of alienation
● Isolation
● Self-destruction
● Violence and frustration

Tone
● Questioning
● Reflective of his actions
● Frustrated
● Psychotic and with a distorted psyche
Warming her pearls
- The title does not give much away
- Sexual relationship between a maid and her mistress
- In the Victorian times, the maids would warm the pearls for their mistresses so thats its not very cold when
they wear them

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Dramatic monologue
● Protagonist is a create of containment, imagination and imprisonment
● Disconnect between external appearance and internal truth
● Nexus of classicism and same-sex relationships; master-slave relationships
● The mistress could/could not have feelings for the maid
● Constant reinforcement of a socio-economic divide
● Superficial obsession, purely vanity-based because there are no emotional qualities described, only physical
● Unrequited love between a maid and her mistress
● Infatuation

Tone
● Implied purity and femininity of the mistress
● Sensual, erotic, enigmatic, intriguing, longing
● Impassioned and erotically explicit
● Lascivious; laced with undertones of love for the woman
● Submissive tendencies; Stockholm syndrome
● Over-exaggeration and over-dramatization of every simple action because of the obsession
● Maid glamorizing and idolizing the mistress and her every move, her lifestyle
● Romantic undertone:
○ Red
○ Blush
○ Lips
○ Fans herself
○ Undressing
○ Naked
Little Red Cap
- Reminds the reader of little red riding hood
- Makes it seem like its a poem for a naive baby because of the word “little”

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Does not follow the pattern of feminizing historic tales, myths or pop culture
● Based off “Little Red Riding Hood” by Brothers Grimm, becomes the mouthpiece of the girl herself
● Transition from adolescence to adulthood; the search for a ‘voice’ and independence + subtle allusions
towards Duffy’s life.
● Relates to women being traditionally attracted to the lone bad boy
● Could refer to Adrian Henri being a bad person and abusive as he is portrayed as the “big bad wolf” and
she thought of him as a threat
● But, Duffy and Henri remained good friends and she was with him when he died in December 2000 and in
an interview, she mentioned that the poem was “just playing around with the story. It’s not necessarily how
it was.”
● The poem as a whole is pretty brutal and stark, with strong feminist undertones
● The relationship does not serve as a dark patch but more like a learning experience where she not only
discovers poetry and writing, but also herself
● Cyclical nature: Starts with the girl with flowers and ends there
● Intertextuality:
○ Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”: The poet’s past is used as text in both poems to portray a complex
relationship in which a young woman is striving to become independent of an older man. Duffy’s
line “what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?” makes this intertextuality clear, being an
interpretation of Plath’s “Every woman adores a Fascist”.
○ Charles Perrault’s 17th century version of the tale, modified by Brothers Grimm; ​climax of
Duffy’s poem continues her theme of eliminating masculine privilege
■ “ What big ears He had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!” is a direct reference from
the tale
● Reinforces the idea of masculinity
● Emergence from celebrating patriarchy
● Coming of age and entering adulthood
● Women finally speaking up and taking action (anagnorisis)

Tone
● Childlike and naive
● Moving onto deceiving a man and becoming intellectual
● Intimate and sexual (animalistic)
● Violent love making
● Peaceful and tranquil
Mrs.Lazarus
- The fact that the title only associates the woman with her husband’s last name
- The woman does not have an identity of her own
- Women are only recognised by their husbands, and this evokes the elements of a patriarchal society

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Process of dealing with grief and loss
● Emotional turmoil due to loss of loved one
● Societal expectations of women never going back to another man after they are widows
● Overcoming loss and moving on in life
● Finding a lyrical self and moving on
● Metonymy and its repercussions

Tone
● Regretful
● Reminiscent
● Grieving and sorrowful
● Bitterness towards society
● Harsh
● Inner peace and tranquility
● Erotic
Mrs.Midas
- This title suggests that the identity of the lady is only because of her husband
- She is the wife of a greedy man from Greek mythology

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Based off the story “Metamorphoses” by the Roman poet Ovid
● Midas, king of Phrygia, is granted a wish by the god Dionysus so that everything he touches will turn into
gold. He eventually regrets the decision and is forced to ask Dionysus to reverse the spell
● Poem takes the myth out of context and places it into 20th century England, taking the role of King Midas’
wife; however, there is no indication in the poem that anyone is royal or kinglike
● Consistent theme is “touch of gold”
● Mrs.Midas speaks out against her husband and his foolish actions, gradually separating herself from him
and leaving him to waste in isolation while she laments the loss of their physical relationship and the
chance to have a baby together
● Dramatic monologue
● Emotional poverty vs physical wealth
● Consequences of an action
● Sanity vs insanity
● Wisened vs pushover
● Need vs greed

Tone
● Comical undertones
● Emotional
● Wit
● Longing, regret on his behalf
○ “the woman who married the fool / who wished for gold”; third-person tone suggests that this is
what people might say, reflecting the derision and mockery of gossip mongers
○ “I miss most, even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch”; lexical field is related
to human contact, which is exactly where the whole issue even stems from
○ “I think of him in certain lights”
● Tenderness
● Greed/materialism
● Borderline anger + fear
○ “What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for me.”
○ Leaves her belongings away from him for security
○ “Separate beds. in fact, I put a chair against my door, near petrified.”
○ “now I feared his honeyed embrace, the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.”
Anne Hathaway
- She was the wife of Shakespeare who never really got a voice and not many people knew about her
- No one really knows her, but it’s that she has her own personality and identity too
- Tells us who the poem is about, Shakespeare’s wife

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Relates to William Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway
○ Married in 1582
○ Shakespeare was a teenager and Anne was ten years older
○ He left her to make a name for himself as an actor and playwright on the London stage
○ Went back to the city he left her in to buy the biggest house in town using investments and profits
○ His will mentions just one item to be left to poor Anne: the couple’s ‘second best bed’
■ Interpreted as a slight, and evidence that Shakespeare did not love his wife
■ Could refer to the married couple’s own marital bed
○ Best bed in the house was saved for guests
● Narrated by Anne, describes this bed as a whole new world where he was romantic and loving; him leaving
her this bed was the last romantic gesture and not an act of cynicism
● Fittingly, in a poem about the world’s greatest ever poet and wordsmith, she uses language itself as an
extended metaphor to convey the intensity of their passion

Tone
● Soft
● Romantic
● Dramatic
● Exaggerating
● Fondness
● Sensual
● Nostalgic
● Passionate
Salome
- This persona is insignificant in the Bible, and this is the first time that a female's name is in the title
- It shows a dominant woman
- Naive and without an opinion because she is a weak character

Basic Themes & Ideas

● Dangerous female seductiveness; taboos with female promiscuity
● Feminism; Salome tries to overcome female stereotypes and a patriarchal society
● Marxism; Salome would be seen as a woman who is privileged, spoiled and a person who abuses her power
and uses her sexuality to do harm and satisfy her own whim
● Refers to the Biblical myth; Salome portrays the idea of the dangerous seductress as she gets John the
Baptist's head on a platter as a result of her erotic dance for King Herod, her stepfather. The assumption in
Duffy’s poem is that Salome has committed the murder herself, whereas in the biblical story Salome only
caused John the Baptist’s death but did not incriminated because of her feudal and legal privilges
● She comes off a character who can get away with whatever she wants because she is a privileged aristocrat
● Irony of the poem is that this woman lives how most men do and she treats men like women were treated;
role reversal

Tone
● Slightly humorous, but in a dark sense
● Cavalier
● Sense of revenge; the woman is getting back at men who have murdered, or punished woman for their
excessive sexuality
● Crude, graphic and violent which make her unlikable not only due to basic human nature but also because
these were not female-related traits and characteristics to process so she angered people more by stepping
out of the box of female stereotypes than by murdering people
● Menacing satisfaction
Havisham
- This is another title with a female name, which reveals the name of the persona
- She is a character in Charles Dickens; Great expectations
- This is a stand alone name, without a surname which suggests either isolation or she has an identiy of her
own

Themes and ideas

● Bitter love
● Effects of the betrayal of a loved one
● Bitterness at being denied (damaging effect of being ditched)
● Emotional trauma caused due to being left at the alter
● Conflicted state of mind due to being ditched
● Effects of a jilted lover
● Damaging effect of a heartbreak

Tone
● Bittersweet tone
● Resentment and scornful tone
● Painful and hurt
● Betrayed
● Seeks sympathy
● Angry and frustrated
● Lonely and isolated
Originally
- Importance of origin
- Talks about Duffy’s move to from Scotland to England at the age of 6
- Defines her identity and origin

Themes and ideas

● Effect of leaving behind a home for a child
● Home vs foreign country
● Optimism of parents vs resentment of children
● Struggles to find a new identity
● Disorder in life due to moving to a foreign location
● Loss of physical connection vs internal loss (identity)
● Inability to identify one’s self and struggles to fit in
● Forceful adoption to new cultures and people
● Feeling repugnant to new environments

Tone
● Sorrow
● Irritated
● Fearful and intimidated
● Lost and unfamiliar
● Suffering and scared
● Envious of her brother
● Hesitant due to fear of not fitting