The Labatory

Analysing the Laboratory.

The narrative perspective is from a woman's point of view, she is jealous of another woman that is in a relationship with her man. In the poem she creates a poison to kill her and claim the man she wants. The narrator is a very brutal woman as she states 'Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste' this is what she wants to do to the opposing woman.  We know that the narrator is rich with references of ' dance at the King's' or 'Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your mouth' she does not feel that her status is as important to her if she can have her man by saying for her jewels to be taken she does not care for her possessions. She obviously feels very strong hatred for the other woman and wants her to suffer 'Not that I bid you spare her the pain'. The female is very excited about what she is about to do, from her frequent use of the exclamation marks used in every stanza. The writer uses very rich language such as ‘oozing’ and ‘exquisite blue’ to express her excitement and pure joy of the making of the poison and that when this is completed she can claim her man and kill her rival woman.

The iambic tetrameters of this poem and rhyming AABB pattern give it a happy feel which covers the sinister murder story that it is really about. The layout of the poem is split up into four sentence stanzas like a recipe it is very formal. The rhythm of the poem is very fast due to the tetrameters and makes you read it faster and expresses the woman’s haste to get rid of the other woman.

Robert Browning- Porphyria's lover

At the start of the poem the words ' sullen' , 'tore' and 'spite'  (used to describe the outside) give off negative connotations. This is foreshadowing for the ending as the narrator kills his lover, so it makes you expect something bad is going to happen.When the narrators' lover turns up at his cottage the mood changes immediately 'She shut the cold out and the storm'. I think that this is used as a metaphor , so therefore if Porphyria goes outside she will be exposed to the the bad things in life . The narrator does not want her to lose her purity and innocence, stressed by the repetition of 'little' so he keeps his distance and is reluctant to show any affection back to her '....call'd me.When no voice replied, She put my arm around her waist'. After the narrator realises that his Porphyria is in love with him he is surprised and needs to sort out what he can do to end this relationship for her sake. The thought of it surprises him, but his 'heart swell(ed)' and he understood that 'she was mine, mine' and needed to preserve her innocence and who she was at that moment forever so that he would not forget. He believes that to end her life it is the right way to save her from herself and himself too. The narrative tone changes from the moment he strangles her with her own hair, that he once loved. I picture that now she is dead he feels in control of her as the poet cleverly refers back  to the previous phrase when she proppped her head upon his shoulder; this time he puts her head on his shoulder it shows even  more so that he is dominant now. He feels no regret about murdering his lover  ' ...yet God has not said a word!' the final line of the poem is very powerful as at the time period when this poem was written religion was very important and to go against God was a crime in itself let alone committing murder.

The poet uses enjambement throughout the poem to create a sense of a quick pace and short amount of time. This could also be used to represent how short the narrators lover's life was. Iambic tetrameter, where four stresses are used in each line of the poem can also to link with the time and pace of the poem. The genre of this poem is romantic tragedy. This is dramatic monologue.

I recommend Malorie Blackman's books. I love Boys Don't Cry, Noughts and Crosses series.

Private Peaceful quote

I chose the book Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. I love many of his books. The quote i chose was ' I find myself suddenly on my knees and I don't know why. There is blood pouring down my face and my head is wracked with a sudden burning pain so terrible i feel it must burst. I feel myself falling out of my dream down into a world of swirling darkness. I am being beckoned into a world I have never been to before where it is warm and comforting and all-enveloping. I know I am dying my own death and I welcome it.'

I love this quote because it is so desperate that he wishes for death to come (he was in the trenches of WW1). He left his quiet little village to escape the fact that he was in love with his sisters girlfriend, he went to war to forget it all. 

When i woke up the knife was still there.

In class earlier this week we were given this short story: 'When I woke up the knife was still there'.
From this we discussed what this story made us think about, here are some bullet points that I came up with from our discussion:

• The use of 'I' evolves the reader as it is personal, it is stronger than you or we
• The' knife' sets the mood/atmosphere- for me this made me think of a tragedy and something dark
• As readers we begin to fill in the gaps of the story and make it our own
• The readers personality and tastes in genres shows the idea of what the story is about
• We generally thought that the narrator was male
• The 'knife' could be metaphorical for a problem, a cover of something worse
• Connotations with the knife of violence
• No resolution
• Little narrative time.