Transcript Vultures Chinua Achebe

Havisham
Carol Ann Duffy
Lack of ‘Miss’ in her
name highlights lack of
any status.
Havisham
Powerful opening
sentence. Oxymoron of
affectionate and
insulting language.
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead.
Use of pronoun
rather than
real name.
Metaphor showing how
much she has been
crying. Green also
represents envy.
Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could
Metaphor showing how
withered she has
become; her veins stick
out like ropes.
strangle with.
Effective one word
sentence.
Summarises her
whole identity.
Play on word ‘think’.
Shows how inactive she
has been since he left.
Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall;
Word normally
associated with an
animal. Highlights her
lack of femininity.
Loss of language. Losing
the ability to express
herself.
‘slewed’ = turned or
twisted
Nervous – her or the
dress itself?
As the wedding dress
decays, so does she.
Pronouns highlight
how she barely
recognises herself.
the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself,
who did this
to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
Questioning how she became
like this. Use of enjambment
highlights this confusion.
Puce = purplish brown
She becomes able to
express herself again
physically in her dreams.
Again the male is not
referred to by name.
He is simply a body
that she misses.
Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake.
Imagery becomes more
sexually suggestive and then
violent as she awakens to the
reality of her loss and hatred.
Oxymoron used again like
in opening sentence.
Emotional confusion
further highlighted by
use of enjambment.
Connotations of colour:
White = purity, virginity, pale, death
Red = Love, passion, anger, blood
Love’s
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake.
Violent verbs highlight her
anger, reinforce how abruptly
her happy dream of wedded
bliss came to an end.
Grotesque image
emphasising her desire
for revenge.
Romantic idea yet when
juxtaposed with previous
image it becomes sick and
twisted.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
Repeated theme of loss
of language. Emotions
are so confused that
she cannot express
herself clearly.