Giuseppe - Roderick Ford

Transgression

Combines realism with myth to examine how humans can commit terrible acts of cruelty, and find ways to excuse the darkest of deeds. 
Ford’s poetry frequently features distorted realities—blurring the lines between waking life and dreamscapes—where symbolism becomes a powerful tool to reflect inner turmoil and collective guilt. These dreamlike elements can both obscure and illuminate memory, suggesting how trauma reshapes our understanding of the past

Conflict/war

The poem suggests that in times of war normal morality is suspended. The mermaid, representing any outsider or enemy, is sufficiently ‘alien’ to allow us to suspend accepted standards. 

Power

The men have power over the mermaid, which could symbolise traditional male power over women and also the way society maintains power over those who are different, imparting guilt and shame onto them 
Explores the power of language and the ability it has to shape meaning and interpretation, particularly with the confessional tone of this poem and its ability to imply dark ideas 

Structure/form

• The poem’s stanzaic structure consists of short, uneven stanzas which further contribute to its fragmented feeling. The brevity and irregularity in the stanzas reflects the speaker’s fluctuating emotional state 

• Dramatic monologue form. This gives the persona the power of speech, meaning the mermaid’s story is not told by herself but instead told through the lens of male perspective. Exemplifies her powerlessness in the way in which she is rendered physically and metaphorically voiceless (‘had never learnt to speak’) 

‘Mermaid’

• Can be read as a symbol of all those who have been persecuted over a perceived difference—and as an image of the intrinsic value of human life. 

• Analysis of the ways in which during war normal morality is suspended 

• The poem focusses on the differences between the mermaid and the men, not their similarities. Considering that a mermaid is half human half fish, it means that biologically she has as much in common with the men as she has different to them. This is symbolic of the way oppressors assert perceived differences as a tool for subjugation, perpetuating the ideologies that anyone who differs from themselves can be discriminated against. This is representative of marginalised groups persecuted by the Nazis as they were deemed as ‘other’, and different from the Aryan race. The mermaid’s dual nature of human and fish could reflect the way that these groups of people were seen as both human and inhuman by the Nazi regime, and never fully accepted into society 

• Mermaids traditionally associated with sensuality and allure, with the ideology that they act as temptations for men at sea. This mythological lexis adds a fantasy element to surround her identity - exposing that through the combination myth and reality, the men attempt to remove blame from their atrocities, excusing them as less real due by blurring boundaries between fantasy and reality

• Contrast between the realism of ‘World War Two’ and the fantasy of mermaids 

‘they put her head and her hands in a box for burial’

• A factual, removed tone throughout and lack of figurative language shocks the reader and strips the fantasy of the mermaid away 

• Fragmentation of her physical body parts ‘head’ and ‘hands’ is symbolic of her fragmented and dehumanised nature of her identity in the eyes of the men. This shows how people are able to remove blame from themselves for their atrocities by viewing the victim as sub-human in some way 

• Focus on her physical body parts could reference objectification and use of female bodies in society. These body parts e.g. ‘hands’ could be specific to her through fingerprints etc, and therefore shows her own identity that is being buried. This humanises her and makes the atrocities seem worse 

• Alliteration of ‘her head her hands

‘ripe gold roe’

• Not only taking the life from the mermaid, but also taking the ability of her to give life to others. This removes the potential of a whole generation of people, which links to the wider social impact of their actions. This could be seen to allude to Nazi behaviour in WWII as they exterminated entire races of people, making her microcosmic for these marginalised groups that become suppressed at the hands of powerful men. 

• ‘roe’ and ‘egg’ links to her fertility, and the fact that her body is being used as a commodity. Links to objectification of women in society 

• The reference to ‘gold’ echoes the theme of desire and temptation, as gold is a traditional symbol of wealth and beauty, often used to convey desire or obsession

‘she’ ‘her’ ‘it’

• ‘she’ or ‘her’ emphasise her human-like qualities and feminine identity, reinforcing traditional association of mermaids with sensuality and allure 

• On the other hand, ‘it’ is a dehumanising pronoun that ultimately explores the way in which the mermaid is not viewed as an equal but remains an object of fascination rather than a fully realised subject. This dehumanisation can also be viewed as a reflection of broader social dynamics where women (or marginalised figures) are objectified and reduced to symbols or commodities. The use of ‘it’ could thus symbolise the treatment of women as stripped of humanity and complexity 

• By oscillating between pronouns, Ford introduces a sense of liminality to her nature, how she exists in a state between human and inhuman. Her hybridity  

‘Behind’ ‘In the courtyard’  

• This social commentary suggests metaphorically that evil can happen in your own backyard. Human beings, this poem suggests, are capable of truly hideous crimes—and a guilty conscience isn’t always (or even often) enough to stop them. The poem’s wide-ranging cast of murderous characters, from the aquarium-keeper Giuseppe to a priest to a doctor to a fishmonger, further hints that the same potential for evil lurks in everyone, no matter how ordinary, civilized, or caring they might appear. 

‘For which I thank God’ ‘But the priest who held one of her hands while her throat was cut’ 

• The reintroduction of religion emphasises the inhuman acts that have been described by the narrator, but could also be a criticism of religious wars and violence inspired by religious interpretation and how this has claimed so many lives, often in brutal ways, over the centuries. By ending on this idea, Ford could be seen as suggesting that wars, conflict, and human atrocity are likely to continue into the future. 

• Juxtaposition between what should theoretically be the morality of a priest and the brutal murder – corruption in society 

Good phrases

• Ford explores how ordinary men rationalise atrocity by erasing the humanity of their victims