Not My Best Side

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Not My Best Side U.A Fanthorpe The poem depicts an inner monologue of each character in the painting. Each stanza represents a different character from the painting. The first stanza seems to be the dragon narrating, as it mentioned ‘monster’ and its relation to the lady as its victim. While the second stanza represents the lady, evident from the feminine point of view in the tone of the stanza. And lastly, the final stanza represents the knight having ‘diplomas in Dragon/Management and Virgin Reclamation’. Each stanza has a distinct tone. In the first stanza, the tone was flamboyant and self-centred as the dragon spoke of his physique and façade that the painter projected. Which did not please the dragon. It received ‘bad publicity’ from the way the painter painted only two of its feet. This represents the dragon’s lack of grounded-ness in its portrayal as a ferocious, virgin-eating dragon. It was also obsessed with its appearance in the painting as the poem started with ‘Not my best side’ and went on to explain how the painter did not ‘give (it) a chance to pose properly’. Subsequently, it depicted the knight and the lady. The dragon in his monologue referred to the knight being ‘ostentatiously beardless’ unlike other dragon slayers whom by myths are known to be Vikings with abundance of facial hair. The lack of facial hair on the knight reflects the knight’s youth. From the deliberate commas in the line ‘Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror’ followed by a line cut, indicates that the dragon was admittedly raged by the fact that his conqueror was a young punk underserving of the slaying of it. The line cut adds a sense of suspension, whether the dragon was going to speak well about its conqueror or otherwise. Following which, the dragon described the lady as ‘unattractive’ and ‘inedible’. Whereby, she was not worthy to be his victim. And lastly, in

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