Eat Me - Patience Agbabi

Structure

• Comprised of ten three lined stanzas or tercets - rigid form represents the strict control imposed by the man

• Final lines of each stanza are all end stopped ( exception of stanza 6 ) - further signifies the control by the man and compliance of the woman

• Use of enjambement to allow sentences to create a feeling of continuity and pressure

• Use of half rhyme/ assonant rhymes through repeated vowels sounds unifying stanza while maintaining a sense of unease and tension

Phonology / Sound Devices

• Assonance used throughout - enhances feelings of tension

Form

Dramatic monologue - matter of fact voice makes it feel as though she has become numb to partner’s cruelty

Themes/Motifs

• Gendered beauty standards

• Sexism, objectification and dehumanization

• Power, abuse and control

Language

• ‘Eat Me’ literary allusion to Alice in Wonderland when Alice becomes enormous

• ‘Forbidden fruit’ biblical allusion

• Imagery of water

‘When I hit thirty, he bought me a cake three layers of icing’

• Number thirty referencing her current weight

• Instead of a birthday it id a celebration of weight - creates a disturbing tone

• Pronoun of ‘he’ creates an eery tone - never named

• Introduction of motif of food foreshadowing rest of poem symbolising fetish

• Use of short, monosyllabic words creates a violent tone

‘Then he asked me to get up an walk round the bed so he could watch my broad hips wobble’

• consonance of b

• ‘ bed’ creates sexual connotations

• ‘watch’ creates feelings of objectification suggesting intimacy is one-sided

• ‘ get up’ = imperative - forceful, lack of control over her power

‘ Hip judder like a juggernaut’

• assonantly rhymed

• juggernaut - a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive and unstoppable perhaps foreshadowing the later crushing

‘ I was his jacuzzi. But he was my cook’

• metaphors indicate roles within the relationship

• the man being the ‘cook’ provides her the food an essential component to staying alive - highlighting her reliance

• the women acting as a’ jacuzzi’ - water tamed for pleasure a role which is not, this role is undermining and servile

‘ his pleasure to watch me swell like forbidden fruit’

• biblical allusion suggesting there is a subconscious awareness of that this situation is wrong referencing the original sin and temptation

• alliterative ‘f’ s