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    Mean Time

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    api-438963588
    This poem explores themes of regret, loss of love, and the passing of time. Written in first person from the perspective of someone mourning a lost relationship. The speaker feels their time is being treated unkindly as daylight saving means an earlier sunset, leaving them in darkness with their negative memories. They wish they could take back hurtful words said to their former partner, realizing too late they both lacked communication. The tight structure and bleak tone convey the speaker's melancholy and increasingly cynical view that mourning is useless as death is approaching, leaving only brief moments of light between endless nights.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Mean Time

    Uploaded by

    api-438963588
    128 views6 pages
    This poem explores themes of regret, loss of love, and the passing of time. Written in first person from the perspective of someone mourning a lost relationship. The speaker feels their time is being treated unkindly as daylight saving means an earlier sunset, leaving them in darkness with their negative memories. They wish they could take back hurtful words said to their former partner, realizing too late they both lacked communication. The tight structure and bleak tone convey the speaker's melancholy and increasingly cynical view that mourning is useless as death is approaching, leaving only brief moments of light between endless nights.

    Original Title

    mean time

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    This poem explores themes of regret, loss of love, and the passing of time. Written in first person from the perspective of someone mourning a lost relationship. The speaker feels their time is being treated unkindly as daylight saving means an earlier sunset, leaving them in darkness with their negative memories. They wish they could take back hurtful words said to their former partner, realizing too late they both lacked communication. The tight structure and bleak tone convey the speaker's melancholy and increasingly cynical view that mourning is useless as death is approaching, leaving only brief moments of light between endless nights.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    128 views6 pages

    Mean Time

    Uploaded by

    api-438963588
    This poem explores themes of regret, loss of love, and the passing of time. Written in first person from the perspective of someone mourning a lost relationship. The speaker feels their time is being treated unkindly as daylight saving means an earlier sunset, leaving them in darkness with their negative memories. They wish they could take back hurtful words said to their former partner, realizing too late they both lacked communication. The tight structure and bleak tone convey the speaker's melancholy and increasingly cynical view that mourning is useless as death is approaching, leaving only brief moments of light between endless nights.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 6

    Mean Time By Carol Ann Duffy

    Title Analysis

    - Actual “time” being “mean”- time is treating her unkindly.


    - Ambiguous title, could refer to Greenwich mean time, and possibly the hours of darkness.
    - The “meantime” – the time between two significant events.
    End of daylight saving- in the Time is criminal.
    winter we get an extra hour of
    darkness as an our of daylight ‘stole’ implies she had no
    The clocks slid back an hour choice in the matter.
    is taken.
    and stole light from my life
    ‘light’ could symbolise happiness.
    No longer feels welcome, is as I walked through the wrong part of town,
    alienated because her love is
    lost. Mourning our love.

    Feeling of loss is heightened by


    relating it to death.
    Dull
    resignation. “unmendable”, spells of rain
    broken by relief, shows that the
    And, of course, unmendable rain
    speaker is powerless against it-
    no solace, no breaks now.
    fell to the bleak streets
    Ambiguous
    where I felt my heart gnaw “gnaw” connotes violence and is a
    pronouns makes
    verb associated with wild animal-
    poem universal.
    At all our mistakes. possibly suggesting that the speaker
    is relentless.

    Speaker’s heart is still in


    Focus on negatives the relationship. There is
    possibly suggests that no closure.
    only negative
    memories now
    remain.
    Darkness connotes
    Wishful, perhaps desperate.
    negativity.

    If the darkening sky could lif

    more than one hour from this day Regretful, wishing for a
    different chain of events.
    There are words I would never have said

    nor heard you say.


    Both parties are equally to blame There were communication issues
    as they both lacked which likely caused the destruction
    communication skills. of the relationship.
    Direct address- readers may
    feel intrusive as this is a
    confrontation.
    Sees mourning as useless as
    death is quickly approaching.

    Increasingly cynical and But we will be dead, as we know


    negative.
    beyond all light. Small light between darkness
    of nights.
    These are the shortened days

    and the endless nights.

    Plural- shows that the nights are


    guaranteed, yet the singular of
    “light” suggests there is only one
    chance at happiness.
    • Themes: regret, love, passing of time, relationships
    • Narrative voice: first person, regretful, cynical
    • Tone/mood: bleak, pessimistic, melancholic
    • Language techniques:
    • Pathetic fallacy: rain is relentless, shows how speaker has no relief
    • ‘Mourning’: links to loss of love and loss of a person- linking it to death makes the emotions stranger
    and more melancholy
    • Word play with the title, is it the time zone, an ’average’ time or an adjective?
    • ‘Gnaw’: implies maliciousness- animalistic verb possibly suggesting speaker couldn’t tame their partner.
    • Structure form:
    • tight structure,4 four-line stanzas possibly symobolises speaker’s monotonous life.
    • Slight rhyme with ‘light’ and ‘nights’- juxtaposition.
    • Cyclical- begins and ends with death,
    • Context:
    • Surrealism: Duffy is known for her surreal style of writing. This is seen in this poem through the clocks
    which are somewhat personified as moving the tine without the speaker’s consent.
    • Modernism: half rhymes and unchronological order.

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