The poem is written from the point of view of Charlotte O’Neil.
The message the poem is trying to put across is the bad treatment of servants. They are treated like dirt instead of a member of the family.
The language used in this poem is Standard English. Farrell uses contrast to emphasise the difference in the lifestyles of servants and their employers.
“You lay on a silken pillow.
I lay on an attic cot.”
She also uses a technique called pattern of three. She does this to hammer home the points.
“I scrapped out your grate
and I washed your plate
and I scrubbed till my hands were raw.”
The rhythm of this poem is like a song. Which is probably why it is entitled ‘Charlotte O’Neil’s Song’.
This poem does not have a rhyming scheme, although some of the lines do rhyme.
What I most enjoyed about this poem is the way in which Charlotte offends the traditional British view that poor people deserve the gate.
‘Blessing’ is about water and what it means to people why can’t get at it easily.
The poem starts by describing the skin cracking like a pod. This can imply the skin of people which can crack when it is dry and lacks water. It can also apply to the land which cracks when it is dry and there is drought
“The skin cracks like a pod.
There is never enough water.”
It then goes on to describe the reaction of the people when the water pipe in the village bursts. Dharker describes the water as silver. She does this to emphasise the value of water to these people to that of silver.
“The municipal pipe bursts,
silver crashes to the ground”
The characters in this poem are the people of the village. The poem is written from the point of view of a passer by and how they understand the reaction of the people.
The message the poem is trying to get across is that there are places in the world that are not as fortunate as we are, where clean water is in short supply.
This poem is split into four verses with each verse longer than the previous one, except for the last one. I think that the length of each verse is to do with the amount of water in it. In the first verse there is no water so it is really short. In the second verse there is a small amount of water, so this verse is a little bit longer. In the third verse a pipe bursts, there is a lot of water so this verse is longer than the first two.
The length of the lines also changes. In the first verse the length of the lines are short.
This gets bigger in the second verse and bigger still in the third verse.
There is no rhythm of rhyme in the poem.
In the poem Dharker uses metaphors. One example of this is when she describes the water as silver.
“The municipal pipe bursts,
silver crashes to the ground”
What I most enjoyed about this poem is the way the value of water is emphasised to the readers, many of whom take it for granted.
