'Originally' By Carol Ann Duffy - poetry commentary

Our Life is one long Journey, with good as well as bad times in it. From childhood to old age, we strive forever to experience and learn, often positive as well as negative turns in life often bringing upon one a lot of change. In the poem 'originally' by Carol Ann Duffy, one reads about a seemingly sudden change in a Childs life, where one is confronted with leaving their home, their country, to live somewhere else unknown. In 'Originally', which is divided into three parts, one follows the experiences of a speaker, who seems to have been forced to leave his or hers home, change and crisis being endured, and how the speaker in the end effect, slowly, adapts. The Poem though seemingly talks about this child leaving its home and changing, the Poem also shows how People all there lives change, starting by growing up to become a teenager, then to an adult and in the end to an aged person.

The Poem starts of with a type of introduction; it begins the Poem by setting up a mood, by explaining how she moved with her family. The speakers love for her homeland is exemplified by using domineering words such as 'own', which makes it seem as something unique, and also by telling the reader that her brothers were 'bawling' the word 'home.' A combination of alliteration and imagery in the first line "red room" and "fell through the fields" also helps emphasize this. All of these rather unsympathetic words encourage a development of a depression throughout the Poem. The personification of the 'miles (which ran) back to the city...' seems to indicate how, while being on this train, makes the child feel worse and worse knowing its becoming more distant from its homeland, and this reflecting that the land is passing so quickly it seems to be running away past. The whole stanza mainly concentrates on the child and its family, except for the last line, this sudden change also brings up strong emotions because from one image of leaving the place you have always known to be your home,