The Diet Quotes Analysis and Structure~ Carol Ann Duffy

STRUCTURE - 8 stanzas

Even stanza suggests a desire for balance and order (odd reflect chaos or imbalance)

STRUCTURE - 7 lines

Suggests unpredictability (odd number)

STRUCTURE - Enjambment throughout

Constant? (no stopping - jumping from diet to diet or from diet to binge to diet?)

STRUCTURE - No end rhyme

Unconventional - like how the women is breaking away from traditional standards of beauty for women?

STRUCTURE - Free verse

Follows the natural rhythms of speech and usually convey true or strong feelings in poetry.

'The diet worked like a dream'

*Cliches* - Satirising the limited and typical mind-set of must-get-thin-quick

'No sugar, salt, dairy, fat, protein, starch or alcohol'

*Hyperbolic List* - Starts plausible, but soon becomes absurd --> Parodying diets based on abstention?

'By the end of week one... fortnight in..end of the month'

*Time Frame* - Mimics the goal orientated nature of dieting

'...half a stone, shy of ten'

*Enjambment*- Replicates the sense of excitement/shock, before reality ensues

'Shrinking, skipping breakfast, lunch, dinner, thinner'

*Asyndetic List* (NOTE - this is a list without a or the) - Creates a claustrophobic, spiralling nature - she cannot stop - focussing on just getting thinner

'...skin and bone'

*Parallelism* - Relatively symmetrical structure also creates a sense of inevitability and inescapability

'Starved on, stayed in, stared in'

*Triadic List and Consonnance* - Each increases the mundane nature of her existence

'Starved on, stayed in, stared in... svelter, slimmer'

*Sibilance* - Weak sound of bitterness and fatigue

'Untouched... unsupped'

*Parallelism*

'Her skeleton preened under its tight flesh dress'

*Personification* - Gruesome image coupled with the verb preen - like a peacock - moves into the grotesque (NOTE - The grotesque is when a writer wonderfully constructs a horrible image in which there is beauty)

'..guns for hips'

Demonstrates the violence of anorexia - but whom is this aggression directed at? Is it dangerous to her? Is she toxic (she has adopted a mindset of the fact you need to be skinny/attractive to be accepted) Or is society/beauty standards/dieting culture toxic? Or does the issue lay in the patriarchy?

'Air water' - *Enjambment* - builds anticipation to nothing

'Anorexia's true daughter'

*Personification* - reflects warped nature of womanhood and female identity

'A slip of a girl, a shadow'

*Metaphor* - signifies physical and spiritual atrophy

'The height of a thimble'

*Volta*

'Seed small'

*Imagery* - Highlights horrific regressive nature of the condition

'In...sing'

*Internal Rhyme* - Hints at internal conflict

'Down, out, nobody's love'

*Narrative Focus* - Shift from the physical to emotional - nothing left?

'They raved all night.'

*Simple Sentence* - Complicated sequence of events turned into four words - hazy memory?

'She slept for hours'

*Subtext* - Hints at depression

'Tent of a nostril...caves of an ear.'

*Imagery* - Indicates a fixation of the physical

'Like a germ'

*Simile* - Links back to the idea of being a seed earlier, but also at the contagious and illness-like nature of anorexia

'She lived in a tear'

*Metaphor* - Again, links back to sadness and depression

'South..mouth...chap..lip...fat.'

*Rhyme* - Replicates her sense of enjoyment at last as she gorges

'She loved flesh and blood, wallowed in mud under fingernails'

*Imagery* - All focused on visceral imagery

'Tip of a tongue'

*Consonance* - Replicates the fragility of her position

'Gulped, swallowed, sent down the hatch'

*Triad* - Indicates fixation with the sensation of swallowing

'Wine, bottoms up, cheers, fetched up in a stomach just before lunch'

*Asyndetic List* - Creates a disorientating effect, especially the reversal of

direction - confusion

'Avalanche'

*Metaphor* - Indicates her perspective on the food she is eating - unstoppable

'Then it was sweet' - *Symbolism* - Initially seems to suggest some sort of decadent enjoyment

'Roquefort, weisslacker-kase, gex' - *Triad* - All foods are decadent

'It was smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, hot boiled ham, plum flan, frogs' legs'

*Asyndetic List* - Indicates gorging with no distinction

'Chomped and chewed and gorged'

*Syndetic List* - Indicated the physical process and pleasure of eating

Inside the Fat Woman now, trying to get out'

*Pun or Cliché* 'I'm a fat person in a think person's body alongside alluding to the virus-like nature of anorexia