Summary
Summary Poem Analysis: Effects
- Module
- Unit 3 - Poetry
- Institution
- PEARSON (PEARSON)
Over 4 pages of analysis of ‘Effects’ by Alan Jenkins. From ‘Poems of the Decade’ for Edexcel A-Level English Literature.
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Effects (Alan Jenkins)Title
• Suggests someone’s physical possessions, objects
• Simple – few objects, sense of loss, bare, lack of emotion
• Legacy after they die, material things they leave behind (emotive resonance)
• Also sense of consequences, impacts and purposes
Possible themes
• Grief and loss, death
• Memory
• Age and passage of time
• Family relationships, mother/son, generational gap
• Love and marriage
• Impotent guilt and regret
Form
• Jenkins is known for formally brilliant, scrupulous structures.
• One long block of text – continual, accumulation of lists effect.
• Only 2 sentences – full stop signifies death (first recalling impact of father's death
on his mother, second his mother's death) and its finality.
• Complex clauses and sub-clauses – disorganised and fragmented scheme reflects his
thoughts; prolonged regret, guilt and confusion; switching between past memories
and harsh reality of present/recent past.
• Scattered couplets across the poem – brief, rare, uncertain connections with his
mother
• Dense and more frequent rhymes at end (3 lined rhythms) – mirrors poet persona’s
growing sense of reality, regretful understanding; finality of death and yet also
becomes emotionally closer in thinking about the significance of the objects she
has left behind
• List technique used throughout – extends pain of memories, ruminative
• Semicolon signifies shift in time (return from memories to state of mother in the
hospital)
Voice
• Theme of loss, raw confessional tone; use of sharp wit to lay emotions bare are key
features of Jenkins’ poetry.
• Honesty of personal exposure in this poem – details mother's decline, ending in a
psychiatric ward.
• Physical connection of holding mother's hand (first action of the poem) and
noticing new details is what triggers memories about her. Emotion comes as a
consequence of the objects she has left behind (significance of the title, as he is
experiencing the effects of her effects).
, • Listing of objects rather than referencing the literal detail of emotion – way of
holding back emotional feelings (regret, guilt, powerlessness, grief etc.)? Masculine
response to grief, focusing on tangible and concrete in a situation of uncertainty
and instability?
• Sense of regret that he did not do more for his mother or stay with her when she
was dying and vulnerable – regret at past self and lack of compassion, guilt at his
past resentment and neglect of his filial role.
• Painful that he is only appreciating her with loss – only becomes aware of mother's
effects and the memories tied in with them once they have been removed;
sequence of mother's grief for her husband and then son's loss of his mother
(regret, wishes he valued and cared for her in life).
Mother’s hands and objects triggering memories
“I held her hand" - first action of the poem releases a flood of memories. Physical
connection while mother is alive. Emotion comes from this physical connection of holding
her hand, rather than the listed objects, connections contrasts to detachment from
mother.
Mother cooking for family:
• "That was always scarred" - hard work, dedication and sacrifice for family
• "From chopping, slicing, from the knives that lay in wait/ in bowls of washing-up" -
hard and difficult labour of mother, huge effort and care, suggests past eras and
stereotypical female role.
• "That was raw,/ the knuckles reddened,/rough from scrubbing hard/ at saucepan,
frying pan, cup and plate" - endless chores, suggests toil, working class. List
technique – realisation of her domestic and nurturing role, considering pain she
endured to bring up family.
• "And giving love the only way she knew,/ in each cheap cut of meat, in roast and
stew" - food and cooking associated with maternal nurturing, guilt that he didn’t
appreciate this at the time.
• "Old fashioned food she cooked and we ate;" - simple structure of her cooking and
family eating suggests only now appreciates her efforts and hadn’t previously
reflected on, semicolon denotes distance and separation between past memories of
her hands and their current state
Rings --> holiday souvenirs
• "And I saw that they had taken off her rings" - symbol of love, everlasting, cyclical,
often feminine, personal attachments. Impersonal 'they' - clinical hospital,
dehumanising.
• "The rings she'd kept once in her dressing-table drawer/ with faded snapshots,
long-forgotten things" - flows into memories associated with them, distance from
this past
• "(Scent-sprays, tortoise-shell combs, a snap or two/ from the time we took a
holiday 'abroad')" – parentheses denotes listing of objects, not emotions (masculine
way of holding back pain). 'We' - in past did connect, shared experience, no longer
the case.
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