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Summary loud poem analysis
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loud poem analysis and annotations
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Loud
(Epigraph:)
Parents with mutilated children have been turned away from the empty hospital and told to
hire smugglers to take them across the border to Quetta, a Pakistani frontier city at least six
hours away by car.
(Afghanistan, 28 October 2001) Many members of the public are outraged by what
they see on the news but do not do anything about
(Poem:) it, or don’t see themselves holding the power to. The
The News had often made her shout, poem explores one woman’s ultimate rage with the
Abrupt sentence –
but one day her voice ripped out of her throat news and her using her voice to protest
suggests the power in
her voice like a firework, with a terrible sulphurous crack
that made her jump, a flash of light in the dark The violent connotations show how intense
Now she was loud. the anger really is
Like a volcano – ‘Sulphurous crack’ – ‘made her jump’ –
suggests the woman is startled at the power of her own Light symbolises a spark of hope in a
voice broken and suffering world.
Duffy uses the opening line to emphasize the key verb of the poem, ‘shout’. Indeed, the syntax places this
word in the key place of the first line. Duffy then places an endstop after the word, furthering the emphasis
placed on ‘shout’. This moment of breaking silence is incredibly important, being the catalyst for the following
events of Loud. This use of syntax is repeated on the final line of the first stanza. Duffy places emphasis on
‘loud’, furthering the vocal impact of the first stanza
The harsh consonance plosive of ‘p’ in ‘ripped’ mirrors the brutality of the explosive voice. Her voice springs
from her body, ‘ripped out of her throat’, Duffy compounding the extremity of the moment.
The voice is represented by light, ‘a flash of light in the dark’, signalling the positive impact that women’s
voices are brining. Light is understood as a metaphor for positivity, with ‘dark’ being negativity, the voice
lighting up the dark.
Refers to political corruption and scandals – although this may not
refer to a particular MP, an example from the early 2000s was the
Officegate scandal in 2001 in which Scottish First Minister Henry
McLeish was accused of not refunding the House of Commons for
income he had received.
Before, she’d been easily led,
Onomatopoeia – “roar” –
one of the crowd, joined in with the national whoop
conveys animalistic power and
for the winning goal, the boos for the bent MP, the cheer
strength.
for the royal kiss on the balcony. Not any more. Now
she could roar.
Studen
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, Studen
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Throughout the whole of the second stanza, Duffy uses many caesuras. Considering she is discussing how
‘Before, she’d been easily led’, this can represent the stereotype of a silent or quiet woman. Duffy uses the
metrical pauses that caesura initiates to reflect this stereotype. The fourth line slows into the fifth undisrupted,
the use of enjambment reflecting her breaking out of the disrupted meter. This engenders the idea of gaining
her voice, words beginning to flow easier.
She practiced alone at home, found
she could call abroad without using the phone, could sing
like an orchestra in the bath, could yawn like thunder
watching TV. She switched to the News. It was all about
Muslims, Christians, Jews.
Duffy uses exaggeration to reveal the length that the woman’s voice has grown. The hyperbole of ‘she could
call abroad without using the phone’ demonstrates the power o the female voice.
This carries redolences of the mythical
Harpies, a symbol of monstrous female
power.
The woman has become
isolated for speaking out –
Then her scream was a huge bird negative environment ‘wailing’.
that flew away into the dark; each vast wing a shriek, However, there is still great
Gives connotations of awful to hear, the beak the sickening hiss of a thrown spear. power in her voice despite this,
Greek mythology and She stayed up there all night, in the wind and rain, wailing, as her voice has the power to
hideous beasts which uttering lightning. create a “storm” – “uttering
would terrorise the lighting”
citizens – could suggest
the woman’s voice is
unwelcomed by the Duffy symbolizes the freedom that ganging a voice can give through the ‘huge bird’. A ‘bird’
British public for whom is often a symbol of flight and freedom, this therefore symbolizing women breaking from the
it has broken the calm constraints of society. Duffy furthers the combination of women and nature imagery,
and quiet idealised lives ‘uttering lightning’. Nature is often a symbol of power within the literature, Duffy attaching
– the British are known this power to the female voice.
for being reserved, so
Duffy could be urging This conveys the sheer magnitude of the
her readers to speak power of the female voice – similarly to ‘The
out and take more Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High' in which “a
action cheer like an avalanche bounced off the roof.”
Down, she was pure sound, rumbling
like an avalanche. She bit radios, swallowed them, gargled
their News, till the words were - *ran into a church and sprayed
the congregation with bullets no one has claimed* - gibberish, crap, in the cave of her
mouth.
Studen
ts
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