a blackly humorous version of the myth
Medusa
By Carol Ann Duffy
This dramatic monologue offers an unusual perspective on the Gorgon Medusa. She is a
symbol of terror and ugliness, feared for her terrible looks and foetid breath. In giving
Medusa a chance to tell her story Duffy asks us to consider an alternative view and to see
her as a woman who, fearing betrayal by her husband, developed the terrible physical
characteristics for which she is so well known.
personification – which is fitting
as the thoughts become snakes
which almost appear to have a
life of their own
Opens with a list of emotions. The snakes on
Medusa’s head are the embodiment of her
destructive and negative thoughts about her
love betraying her.
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy
grew in my mind,
which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes
as though my thoughts
hissed and spat on my scalp.
Onomatopoeia:
reason for this is to
contact with the
audience make the
reader feel as they
are in the poem
Alliteration / sibilance: mimics
the hiss of the snakes – vivid,
grotesque imagery
alliterations enhance the
fluency and quicken the
pace of the poem, making
it more manacing
normally metaphorically used to describe a
person who uses a lot of obscenities but in this
case there is a literal sense of her mouth being
filthy and putrescent, along with her tongue
My bride’s breath soured, stank
Images of old age
in the grey bags of my lungs.
I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,
yellow fanged.
There are bullet tears in my eyes.
Are you terrified?
She asks 'Are you
terrified?' directing the
question to the 'perfect
man, Greek who is
presumably Perseus. She
would prefer the man she
loves to be stone than
someone else's.
The danger posed by upsetting Medusa is
emphasised by the metaphor. Harsh image
reflects her stony feelings
Imperative verb, short, stark sentence: a frightening command and warning. Suggests she is in charge
Be terrified.
It’s you I love,
perfect man, Greek God, my own;
but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray
from home.
So better by for me if you were stone.
First rhyme comes in
line 15. Suggests the
certainty she has that
he will leave her as she
gets older. Sense of
inevitability and
resignation about it.
a chilling warning in the shape of a list of
creatures that she has turned to stone
I glanced at a buzzing bee,
a dull grey pebbly fell
to the ground.
I glanced at a singing bird,
a handful of dusty gravel
spattered down.
She uses appropriate
types of stone for each
living thing that Medusa
kills
What do these 2 things have in
common?
The looks are getting progressively longer as the poem goes on – we have moved from
a glance to a look and in the next stanza to a stare. This mirrors Medusa’s growing
anger and frustration.
I looked at a ginger cat,
a housebrick
shattered a bowl of milk.
I looked at a snuffling pig,
a boulder rolled
in a heap of shit.
The verbs 'spattered' and 'shattered' are
powerfully destructive and disruptive to the
natural order that would otherwise prevail
the animals increase in size, as
though she is working up to
something. This builds on the
increasingly sinister tone of the
poem
this oxymoronic phrase is
central to the main ideas of
the poem. Medusa is the
physical embodiment of love
going wrong.
Medusa is not able to look for long at
others but is able to stare at herself in the
mirror and see all her imperfections and
aging. She is sure that the love she
shared with her husband has ‘gone bad’
because of how she now looks.
I stared in the mirror.
Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon.
I stared at a dragon.
Fire spewed
from the mouth of a mountain.
Metaphors. It is suggested that he is cold and maybe even hurtful to the
speaker. “shield” suggests guarded and closed with “heart” we get the idea
that he does not return the speaker’s affection.
“sword” obviously has connotations of cutting, violence and pain so just as a
sword cuts, so the speaker suggests that the man’s words cut and hurt her.
Implies
betrayal
And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue
and your girls, your girls.
Wasn’t I beautiful
Wasn’t I fragrant and young?
Pathos. We are reminded of
the contrast between what
Medusa was, and what she
has become
Look at me now.
The final line is loaded with ambiguity. It indicates her resignation and sadness in the face
of what she has become but there is also a remaining desire for Perseus to see her as she
once was. A third element is that if he were to look at her directly he would turn to stone
and be lost to her forever anyway which, as she says in stanza three would be 'better by
far' than enduring betrayal.
Comparison
The Clown Punk
The eponymous characters of both poems are frightening as well as
tragic.
Both poems rely on strong visual imagery to engage the reader.
Like Medusa, the Clown Punk is a character we wouldn't normally
observe so closely: both poems ask us to take a second look at
someone we might try to avoid.
Singh Song!
Both poems use distinctive imagery to create the character of a
strong woman.
Alliteration and rhyme are powerfully used in both poems, but
neither follows a regular rhyme scheme.
Although both poems are about marriages, love leads to happiness
in Singh Song!, unlike the love described in Medusa.