Here’s a full analysis of the poem ‘The Three Fates’ by Rosemary Dobson, tailored towards GCSE/IGCSE students but also suitable for those studying at a higher level.
Includes
STORY / SUMMARY
SPEAKER / VOICE
LANGUAGE FEATURES
STRUCTURE / FORM
CONTEXT
THEMES
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Content preview
The Three Fates
At the instant of downing he invoked the three sisters.
It was a mistake, an aberration, to cry out for
Life everlasting.
Rosemary Dobson
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Fates — also known as the Moirai, goddesses who appeared in Greek and Roman Mythology. The Fates
were said to weave the threads of life for mortal beings, creating the destiny of each human on Earth.
Instant — moment
Aberration — something unusual or different from the norm
Agonies — feelings of great pain
Reel — two possible meanings, either a fishing reel - a spool that fishing line winds around that unlock
when casting a fishing rod into the water, or a film reel - a recording of film that is kept wound around a
cylinder so that it can be played by projectors.
, STORY / SUMMARY
Stanza 1: The speaker tells us about a man who made a mistake — he was
drowning and about to die, but in his final moments he called to the Fates to
make him immortal (“life everlasting”).
Stanza 2: We are told that he lives his life in reverse — he rises to the
surface of the water, puts on his clothes, and goes home.
Stanza 3: The man suffers as he lives his life backward. He writes poems in
reverse and wipes tears before he cries.
Stanza 4: A woman (“her”) is introduced in this stanza, we assume she’s
a partner. The man’s life is running backward, so he watches her become
younger and turn back into a child.
Stanza 5: As the man reaches the beginning of his life, there is a short pause
and then his life unravels again before him - like a film “reel”. This suggests
that his immortality will be spent constantly going back and forth through
his memories and experiences, from beginning to end and back again. So he
never lives any more than he already has, but he never dies either.
SPEAKER / VOICE
There is a third-person omniscient narrator who speaks in the past tense,
telling us about an event that has already occurred. The narrator tells us what
happened to the unnamed subject (“he”) in the final moments of his life, and
then as he refused to accept death how he instead was forced to relive his
life playing backward and forwards forever, from the moment of his birth up
to the moment of drowning.
We have a sense that the speaker sees this alternative to death as a form of
constant suffering and torture, and that it is an unnatural way to exist — it
seems that he/she prefers the idea of natural death to eternal life. However,
there is also a tone of sadness to the poem as it is being told in the past
tense — we realise that the man has already made his decision to ask for
eternal life, and so there is nothing that can be done for him now.
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