Essay, Valentine Carol Ann Duffy

The poem Valentine is written by Carol Ann Duffy. Throughout the Poem she shows the positive and negative sides about love by comparing love to an onion. She does this by using different techniques such as language features such as metaphors, simlies, Imagery and word structure. All these techniques make it interesting because she uses an onion as a girft to represent love and relationships.
In the begining of the poem Duffy starts off with a negative in opening line. "Not a red rose or a satin heart'. She tries to tell her Valentine to not expect anything romantic. This is telling the reader that it is not somthing sweet, romantic or taditional gift but something unique and original. Then in the following lines she sets out why and onion is a good gift. Duffy then uses a metaphor "It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love'. The 'brown paper' is the outside of the onion that hides the white vegetable inside. This brown skin is the wrapping paper of the gift, the onion. Duffy compares her gift, the onion, to the moon being wrapped in brown paper. This picture of the moon represents the whole onion, just afger it has been peeled. The words "it promises light' give a positive conntation meaning the moons 'light' represents love like a new start and begining of a relationship. Moonlight often provides a romantic setting. The peeling of the onion is also like two people taking off each other clothes before they make love "like the careful undressing of love'. THe different layers of the onion are like the layers of someones discovering the layers in a relationship. Therefore Duffy begins the poeam with a negative conatation and a positive connatation about the onion befoere giving it to her Valentine.
In the second stanza of the second line a similie is used "It will blind you with tears like a lover'. To show that onions will make you cry and make you blind of the pain and that love can do the same thing to a