EAT ME

Themes

• control

• relationships

• appearance

• empowerment vs submission

• obsession

structure

• 3 line stanzas - feelings of entrapment

• ten rigid stanzas reflecting ten years of control and the oppressive nature of the relationship

• rhythm seems conversational and matter of fact: numb

• audacious dramatic monologue feels deceptively calm which examines an extreme kind of unhealthy relationship

• assonance, subtle disguised rhyme reflects a sense of uncertainty and claustrophobia, disguising his manipulation as love

• enjambment halfway through signalling tone change and a pattern is broken - ending of end stopped lines

• sexual politics but also a post Colonial viewpoint (forbidden fruit, breadfruit, desert island, globe, tidal wave) where the colonial authority is ultimately overwhelmed by the power of the former colony

• patterns of alliteration, assonance and repetition combine to convey a cloying sensuousness which mirrors the excess described

• Interesting insights in eat me → relationship from the point of view from one of its participants → using imagery of waves, shipwrecks despite their relationship as an unhealthy microcosm 

‘the icing was white but the letters were pink’

• White is neutral and suggests purity. Could this mean that he was denying to himself the abusive role he was playing? Trying to dupe her into believing his intentions were selfless is a strategy often used by abusive people?

• the idea that ‘the letters were pink’ reinforces ideas of stereotypical femininity, and by conforming to this, Agbabi is suggesting that the persona falls within the male gaze, and subsequently, that it is the male gaze that has cast women as commodities

• sense that the male character desires the woman because he has convinced himself that she is something that will sate his ever-growing hunger

• a woman persuaded that she is fluttery, dependent and inadequate

‘judder like a juggernaut’

• literal or metaphoric force that’s destructive and unstoppable reflecting his own satisfaction and pleasure and emphasising her struggle

• alliteration used for dramatic intention and evokes sounds of roundness and jelly

• melancholy, submissive tone - his control affects her physically and mentally evoking sympathy

• the eyes of the male viewer, in examining her flesh, digest her almost as much as a mouth would, suggesting that the poem is a metaphor for the consuming nature of the male gaze — objectifying the speaker

• sexual display uncomfortable to read

• alliteration and unsettling dark humour

‘The bigger the better, he’d say, I like
big girls, soft girls, girls I can burrow inside
with multiple chins, masses of cellulite.’

• casual use of a common expression marks his indifference to the damage he is causing her

• ‘he’ holds the power yet this change later in the poem to repeated ‘i’, showing the shift in power

• She isn’t a specific woman here, his partner, but is grouped as ‘girls’

• ‘girls’ —> reduces her to a child

how could I not roll over on top

• Self justification

• creates a strange dissonance between own will and unconscious compulsion

• Voices of the poem implicate the relationships in various ways, either side yields power to the other and therefore emphasising the unnatural power structures they describe 

• Portray unhealthy, unnatural relationships dominated by compulsion and submission rather than mutual agreement 

‘rush of fast food’ ‘Watch me swell like forbidden fruit’

• alliteration - ‘f’s give stanza a smooth flow, implying that the pattern of their lives is accepted and unchangeable

• dependence is eating away at her sense of self yet still desirable

• reference to sin and temptation

• ‘rush’ - sudden intense feeling when one takes a drug suggesting that the pleasure is fleeting

• sexual understones

‘too fat’

• enjambment — dramatic climax

• irony of ‘full-fat’

• emotionally charged emphasising misery and provokes sympathy

• harsh, disturbingly unemotional and resigned in tone

• repetition - an abundance of fat and misery

• women become down-trodden over time, losing their will and capacity to resist

‘there was nothing else left in the house to eat.’

• pace slows down

• tonal change after acting passively

• ambiguous and unsettling and little insight in either voices emotions or reasons

• feelings are not revealed leaving an unsatisfied conclusion

• passive responder to a command

• final line is open to interpretation

•  speaker finally gains bodily autonomy by drowning the partner

  abrupt and ambiguous but largely optimistic tones → relationships temporary → subjects escaping unhealthy microcosms their relationships have trapped them in