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Analysis Of The Dolphin Poem

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The Dolphin

• The poem is entitled ‘The Dolphin’ by Carol Ann Duffy from the collection Mean Time.
• Duffy is a Scottish poet born in 1955 and is the UK’s first female Poet Laureate.
• She was raised in the Gorbals (Glasgow) but she later moved to Strafford where she attended a catholic convent school.
• Duffy wrote poetry from a young age through the encouragement of her teachers and has since written poetry, plays and other critical work that often targets the promotion of the voices of those that cannot be heard.
• The poem is written as a dramatic monologue from the dolphin’s perspective as it gives us an insight of the dolphins’ life and past and present experiences.
• In this sense, this poem is allied with Translation from the …show more content…

• Throughout this poem a contrast is created between the dolphins past experience and what they have and can expect in the future. The dolphin also expresses their loss of both physical things and mental stability.
• The Dolphin can also be interpreted as a poem about human disillusion, betrayal and loss of direction as it is about the creature relaying his experience in a foreign world.
• Duffy already tilted the poem ‘The Dolphin’ so they are not referred to in the poem making the reader to be able to generalize the dolphins experience to other creatures who too were abducted by man. It also makes the poem more realistic in the way that creates a bond between the dolphin and human beings.
• The poem consists of four stanzas of six lines each and doesn’t contain rhyme. The uniform structure acts as a metaphor for the confinement and uniformity of the dolphins present life compared to the freedom and chaos of the ocean.
• The message of being trapped in a society were following orders is the only way to survive and too much depending on success is …show more content…

• There is parallelism to humans in ‘travelling’ and ‘translate’ to portray the both their confusion and loss of direction as well as to indicate how sophisticated and dignified the dolphin is.
• In the ‘limits of the pool’ in which the dolphin is confided in ‘the same space.’ The repetition of ‘space’ reflects its monotonous life and the full stop at the end shows how limited and restricted their movement is.
• Research has shown that confined dolphins have a shorter life span than wild dolphins and it only has ‘days’ left due to its incarceration.
• The psychological damage the dolphins suffered due to there confinement can be see in ‘for the world/will not deepen to dream in.’ conveying the unnaturalness of this world and how their nightmares have now turned into reality.
• The reference to the ‘other’ again in stanza three further stresses the unity and mutual understanding shared between the dolphins and that they now define themselves in terms of each

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