Small Female Skull- Carol Ann Duffy
- Created by: RevisionQueen4
- Created on: 27-03-21 12:38
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- Small Female Skull
- Themes
- Isolation
- Death
- Self examination
- identity
- Stanza 1
- "With some surprise I balance my small female skull in my hands"
- A reference to her past? "small" suggests how little she is worth?
- "An ocarina?"
- Reference to a wind instrument that looks like a skull. It is ceramic and easily broken. It is also a use of Synathesia.
- "blow" "breath" "exhale" caesura on the end of this line.
- Semantic field of breathing. Justaposes the gothic connatations of the poem. The speaker is pulling herself from decay and examining her living identity.
- "With some surprise I balance my small female skull in my hands"
- Stanza 2
- "lavatory seat"
- Toilet imagery.
- "deck of cards, a slim volume of verse"
- Asyndetic listing. Noun phrase represents fragility.
- "my warm lips to its papery bone"
- Fragmented- not together. Caesura/Enjambment. "Warm" has intimate and positive connatations to paradox the skull.
- "head in my hands"
- She has given up - Negetive image.
- "lavatory seat"
- Stanza 3
- "gottle of geer?"
- "I rinse it under the tap"
- Faced to face with herself/own mortality?
- dis-orrientated. Plosive.
- "I rinse it under the tap"
- "like sand from a swimming cap"
- Reference to a sand timer/simile.
- "swimming cap" flimsy protecting her skull. Looking after herself (Volta)
- "scar"
- metephor of heartbreak.
- "gottle of geer?"
- Stanza 4
- "Love"
- abstract noun. (stresses) you can't see love. Shows attachment.
- "white-tiled"
- Connatations of purity.
- "hollow nouns"
- metephor: reflects the destructive and possibly violent love she has experienced, in which she has lost her identity and words.
- "trembling passionate hands"
- Juxtaposition-acceptance of mortality
- "Love"
- Links to: Mean Time
- Themes
- Untitled
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