Here's a complete breakdown of the poem 'Rhyme of the Dead Self' by A R D Fairburne; from the CAIE / Cambridge IGCSE and O Level Poetry Anthology (Songs of Ourselves, Volume 2, Part 4).
Includes, but is not limited to:
VOCABULARY
STORY / SUMMARY
SPEAKER / VOICE
ATTITUDES
LANGUAGE FEATUR...
Tonight I have taken all that I was
and strangled him that pale lily-white lad
I have choked him with these my hands these claws
catching him as he lay a-dreaming in his bed.
Then chuckling I dragged out his foolish brains
that were full of pretty love-tales heighho the holly
and emptied them holus bolus to the drains
those dreams of love oh what ruinous folly.
He is dead pale youth and he shall not rise
on the third day or any other day
sloughed like a snakeskin there he lies
and he shall not trouble me again for aye.
VOCABULARY
Lad - boy
Lily-white - white as a lily flower
A-dreaming - an old fashioned way of saying ‘dreaming’
Holus bolus - all at once
Ruinous - something that causes destruction and ruin
Folly - stupidity
For aye - for anything
, STORY/SUMMARY
Stanza 1: Tonight I have taken everything that I used to be, and strangled that boy
whom I was - that pale lily-white lad, I’ve choked him to death with my hands, these
claws, catching him as he was dreaming in his bed.
Stanza 2: Then, laughing, I dragged out his stupid brains that were full of pretty love
stories - singing ‘heighho the holly’ - and emptied them all at once into the drains, the
dreams of love, oh how destructive and stupid they were.
Stanza 3: He is dead pale, that young boy, and he will not rise up on the third day or
any other day - he lies there, cast off like a snakeskin, and he will not trouble me again
for anything.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The speaker in the poem uses a dark tone to convey his anger and frustration at the
‘lily white boy’ that he used to be; he murders his former self while he lay
‘a-dreaming’ in his bed because the boy was prone to ‘folly’ - foolishness. There is an
extended metaphor throughout the poem which suggests that it was not the man’s
physical self which died, but in fact, his personality and psychology underwent a
process of transformation. The boy is characterised as idealistic, with a head ‘full of
pretty love tales’, whereas the speaker, who now considers himself to be a mature
man, rejects the idea of love and sees is only as ‘ruinous folly’. The effect is to
suggest that the speaker wants to break from his past self, and reform his character
in a way that is stronger and more emotionally numb so that it can no longer be hurt
by the world - this is often a response that young, idealistic individuals take when
they experience an intense love that goes wrong, so we can infer that the speaker’s
wish to kill his former self is born from a traumatic experience.
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