“Poverty’s dumb. Take it from me
Sunny Jim.”
This quote is from “Fraud” this shows how the voice is dominating and condescending.
When looking at the poem you can immediately see that the line length is generally short, with no more than fourteen words per line and no less than two. This may be a method in which the personas thoughts are expressed, very rapid and direct thoughts.
A lot of the lines end with “M”, for example “scum, slum.” This “M” sound is crude and suggests that the “voice” is similar to that of a whining and spoilt child. Which, in turn, when you research the real life character, says a lot about the person.He
Lots of words in the poem are mono syables which gives a heavy beat to the end of the line.
The character speaks in colloquial language, using a lot of slang words; this gives us an immediate opinion of the character. There is a frequent use of curse words this gives you the impression that the character is very direct not only in his conversations with people but with his whole out look to life. Words such as “Mother fucker” are swear words, but when used in this context in the play it gives a depth to the character. Through Duffy’s use of words we as readers can learn more about the character she is portraying/
A device that Duffy has used in this poem and with a lot of previous poems is the use of ellipsis. For example, the man speaks elliptically, his attitude towards things and he doesn’t explain himself. This shows that his character is “Shady “, he elliptically refers to contemporary things. When he is talking about God, he talks elliptically about a lesbian sex show.
“Then there’s Him-
for whom
I paid for a butch and femme
To make him come.”
To create the contrasting voice in this poem, Duffy uses the above techniques. But what techniques are used in another of her persona poems Havisham?
Havisham is a character taken from literature and given a voice by Duffy. The woman in question is the tragic Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’s novel “Great Expectations.” Some history to the character in Havisham is; she was jilted at the alter by her lover whom she was due to marry. She never really recovered from that day. Inside her house she kept the wedding feast as it was, at this point rotting and rat infested. She wore her once beautiful wedding dress, now reduced to blackened rags. The point is, she wanted to keep everything exactly the way it was the day of her wedding, in hope that her lover would come back to her.
Clearly from the outset there is still bitterness for the love she lost unsuspectedly.The first literary device used in this poem, in the first line is an oxymoron when referring to her lover. This suggests what she once felt for him, and what she thinks of him now. An oxymoron is a contradiction, so it begs the question, how can he be both of these things?
“Beloved sweetheart bastard.”
As in Fraud, there is a use of elliptical language which leaves the reader asking themselves questions about the character and what she is referring to.
“Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead .Prayed for it
So hard I have dark green pebbles for eyes,
Ropes on the back of my hand I could strangle with.”
Who is he? When was “then”? To make this more effective and dramatic, Duffy uses a metaphor to try and convey what it feels like. What it feels like when she is saying how much she has longed for him to be dead. Her eyes are compared to “dark green pebbles”. This has all sorts of connotations, what does a dark green pebble feel like? The first thing that comes to my mind is that it is referring to how she has become cold and almost unhuman.This is what he has reduced her to. Another metaphor is employed in the same stanza when she talks about the ropes on her hands. Of course, she does not literally have ropes on her hands; its connotations are that of veins. The veins on her hands are bulging, through the stress she has been put through.
This poem is full of rage and anguish, unlike Fraud where the main tone was demeaning of others. The woman in this poem is extremely self pitying and is completely self absorbed over what this man did to her. She is lonely and lost, grieving for her lost love.
This poem is not normally structured; it does not flow as most poems do. In the first two stanzas there are two or three words, then a full stop. This method is to give that line a more dramatic and edgy feel, to set off the enigmas in the poem.
“Spinster. I stink and remember.”
“Beloved sweetheart bastard.”
Both of the personas in these poems are not happy or jubilant in any way, they are depressing figures that eventually come to their end. The point is that similar methods are used to create the two contrasting voices. The way in which you use them and the language used is what really determines the creation of a contrasting voice and persona.
