Carol Ann Duffy - Little Red Cap

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Explore Duffys presentation of imagery and themes in a poem of your choice. To what extent is your poem representative of the collection as a whole? I have chosen to explore “Little Red-Cap” in showing how Duffy has presented themes and imagery in this poem. The poems in among the others in the collection that has been based on a fairytale, in this case being, little red riding hood, the story is based on a young girl who is tricked by a wolf and ends up being eaten but then is later save by a woodcutter. Duffys version has few differences with the original, to begin with the original poem is very much based on the simplistic idea of good verses evil, however Duffy has used imagery to add an almost sexual feelings to the poem and the original was in no way sexual. We gain this image almost suddenly “like mistresses, by kneeling married men”. In other ways the fairytale is very much turned on it’s head, as the wolf is portrayed as the “good” character whereas little red riding hood is seen as the “sly” one who appears to know what she is doing to get her way. This continues in the theme of the way Duffys presents the female figures in her poems. Duffy uses varied forms of imagery to help the reader understand the themes she places into the poems. The entire collection focuses on the changing the way society looks at women through these traditional fairytales and greek legends. In the first stanza of the poem, Duffy starts off with the metaphor “At childhood’s end”. This portrays that childhood is so powerful it has been described as a physical place. , “Away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place”, the use of imagery to describe the wolf’s ways, it begins describing the wolf as bad and dangerous. “Away from home” makes us think of the loss of safety, I believe she could be trying to symbolize how going away from your home and the insecurity that
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