Analysis Of Duffy's 'Look At Me Now'

Words such as “soured, stank, grey, foul, fanged and bullet” spotlight the hideousness of Medusa. Now she commands her lover/husband to “be terrified”, a hint that she starts giving full vent to her wrath turning everything she gazes at to a stony figure: “The fact that she has gone from bee to bird to cat to pig to dragon shows the ever-increasing size of her anger: she is not being satiated by these random acts of destruction. They are merely leading her towards greater, more powerful targets until she seems unstoppable” (Geddes 56). The concluding line “Look at me now” (Duffy 41) endorses the power Medusa has which enables her to wreck vengeance on menfolk. Medusa represents women who had undergone an ordeal in a male-dominated society and
This marks the climax of the change since menstruation is a specific physical feminine feature impossible to be acquired by men. It is more painful for Tiresias to throb between two worlds in Duffy’s poem than it is in Eliot’s The Waste Land; however, in the former Tiresias opted for the female world: After the split I would glimpse him Out and about Entering glitzy restaurants On the arms of powerful men-. (Duffy 15) The above lines depict an image of a prostitute at the beck and call of “powerful men”. Though, at the first sight, this depraving portrayal of women may well backfire and do more harm than good to the feminist theory, a scrutinizing view reveals that physical prostitution is a dehumanizing practice forced on women; yet, men sometimes willingly practice metaphorical
Sisyphus The main issue of the poem focuses on the utter futility of married life as the husband is dedicated to his job and, meanwhile, neglects his wife. “In ‘Mrs. Sisyphus’, the male is portrayed as the negative part “stupid and ego-centric” (Peukert 4). The speaker gives full vent of her anger through a masculine rhyme and half rhyme which, if deeply thought of, gives a sense of irritation. “The poem is particularly distinctive for its manipulation of various kinds of sound effect”(Strachan and Terry 70). Speaking about the beauties of rhyme, Jeffrey Wainwright says: “Sometimes we might gorge on a wonderful excess as in a poem like Carol Ann Duffy ‘s (1955-) ‘Mrs Sisyphus’ (1999) which plays exultantly on the words ‘jerk’, ‘kirk’, ‘irk’, ‘berk’, ‘dirk’, ‘perk’, ‘shriek’, ‘cork’, ‘park’, ‘dork’, ‘gawk’, ‘quirk’, ‘lark’ and ‘mark’