Explore the ways which Carol Ann Duffy portrays the thief in 'Stealing'

by pawonie (student)

Question 1: Explore the ways in which Carol Ann portrays the behaviour of the thief in this poem. By Zhong Huang

The thief in Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “stealing” talks about the most unusual item he has ever stole – a snowman. The futility of the persona’s ruthless actions is portrayed by Duffy in the poem, which also suggests the causes of this behavior to be a childhood deprived of arts and joy.

The ruthlessness of the thief’s mind is vividly portrayed by Duffy. The persona thinks of himself as relentless and cold-hearted – “my mind as cold as a slice of ice.” The internal rhyme here imitates what is going on internally in the man’s mind. He is self-aware of his coldness, shown in this case by the imagery of “ice”, and is proud of it. However, there are also many references to coldness in the rest of the poem – “winter” “frozen” “chill”. The thief behavior is shown to be selfish and cocky – “part of the thrill was knowing that children could cry in the morning. Life’s tough.” This line further emphasizes the ruthless quality of his mind. The fact that making children cry would be a “thrill” is disturbing for the reader. His cockiness comes out in “life’s tough” – the statement would be said in a not caring way, as if he has seen it all and is merely stating the obvious. The short sentence also gives the thief a masculine, to-the-point quality which helps distinguish the gender of the persona in the poem.

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The thief gets pleasure from the act of burglary itself and not the thing which he stole. “Sometimes I steal things I don’t need. I joy-ride cars to nowhere, break into houses just to have a look.” It is understandable if someone steals out of necessity; however in this case his behavior serves no purpose other than to entertain himself. He focuses on the “thrills” and “joy-rides” of the thefts, but strangely, not the items. The voice seems to watch over himself at times – “I watch my gloved hand twisting the doorknob.” “I watch” implies a movie-like experience, further reinforcing how he “watches” his thefts for the thrill of it. When he is stealing the snowman is “hugged to his chest, fierce chill pierc(es) (his) gut.” Here Duffy uses the sibilance of the “st” “ce” “ch” and “es” to convey the excitement of stealing a snowman. The thief often leaves a mark of his presence. He “leaves a mess,” which could suggest defecation, a common trait of burglary. Perhaps he does this for fun. The sigh into a mirror - “Aah” could be interpreted in a number of ways. One interpretation could be fogging up the mirror and maybe leaving an amusing message behind – the thief feels smug, as if in stealing things he is better than the rest of society.

Duffy shows the cause of the thieves behavior is that he is bored from an empty childhood deprived of arts and fun. He feels lonely – “I wanted him, a mate.” The thief could have no friends, nobody to love him, which is why he feels the need to steal a snowman. Jealousy could also be a factor of the theft – he is jealous of the fun and happy lives of the children, something he might never have experiences in his own childhood, so he is taking revenge on the children for being happy whilst he didn’t experience as much joy when he was young. The thief comes to a violent realization after his failed reassembly of the snowman, emphasized by the language duff uses: he “boots” it while his breath “ripped out in rags”. The realization is that he can never relive the past and gain happiness from imaginary mates. The reader sympathizes with the sadness of him “standing alone among lumps of snow, sick of the world.” The clues that he steals a “bust of Shakespeare” and tries to learn how to play a “guitar” reveals to us that the thief is actually a cultural person deep inside. It’s just that he was starved of these things when he was young which turned him onto this cold, calculating personality .The result is the thief having nowhere to go, “so bored (he) could eat himself”, left alone with nothing to do.

The persona is portrayed by Duffy as behaving ruthlessly, trying but failing to grasp at something which is already long gone.