Aunt Jennifer Essay

406 Words2 Pages
841413 Aunt Jennifer’s Essay In the ironic poem “Aunt Jennifer tigers,” by Adrienne Rich, the author used imagery and tone shift to express her loneliness and her unhappy marriage, with her tiger as her only escape to happiness. Rich ends the poem on a triumphant note no matter how bleak the situation may be, there is always some hope to happiness. Rich used one image which was “tigers prancing”(1) gives the reader a clear understanding that aunt Jennifer finds strength and hope in her tigers on the needlepoint tapestry. Rich used Aunt Jennifer imagery in the first stanza to describe what the tigers are doing in the knitted tapesry “tigers prancing” (1) “Bright” (2) as positive and happiness in the tapestry. Aunt Jennifer describes the tiger fearless “they do not fear the men beneath the tree” (3) Aunt Jennifer is terrified and scared of her husband but she created these tiger to not fear anything. “They do not fear the men beneath the tree…” (3) Aunt Jennifer is feeling nervous when she couldn’t knit right “…finger fluttering” (5) Aunt Jennifer is thinking that she never find happiness ever again with her husband. “Find even the ivory needles hard to pull” (6) that she is having a hard time pulling the needles through the knitting screen, when she has a hard time believing that she could find happiness. “The massive weight of the uncle’s wedding ring sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer hand” (7-8) that she feels the pressure and she cannot bear to stay married to her husband. That the marriage is crashing down on her life and she feels dead inside and the tigers are the only one keeping her will to be happy again. “When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie, still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.” (9-10) Aunt Jennifer is terrified of her husband and that she did not live a joyful, happiness marriage instead a terrifying, sorrow and misery underneath
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