Hidden Betrayal Essay

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Hidden Betrayal “One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though… betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope” (Deitz). When a person has been betrayed, they may seek some form of justice, putting right (at least for them) what they feel has been wronged, including their sensibilities. In the poem “Hanging Fire”, betrayal has taken over a teenager both physically and emotionally in many aspects. Puberty is a time of self-discovery that led the teenager’s skin into betraying her. The teenager is flat out worrying about everything which is what a lot of teenagers do. The reader gets a sense of worry throughout this poem. She is stressed and she portrays that. The diction sets this tone because the speaker makes generalizations such as, “nobody even stops to think about my side of it” (Lorde 469), and how her skin has “betrayed,” her. Indeed she seems as if she is being overdramatic, but puberty has caused her to feel as if she has to overcome puberty on her own. The speaker could be implying that the teenager is still in love with an immature boy who still sucks his thumb in private, and that she is worried about her ashy knees and a skin that has “betrayed her,” and she can’t accept the fact that puberty could get in the way of the boy and her. As the teenager starts puberty her mind is occupied with death; this is because she is invigorating low self esteem on herself often to rely on how she is doing in the present to determine how she feels about herself which is what people with poor self esteem will do. In this case, however, the teenager reflects her low self esteem towards her ashy skin. The imagery of the mother plays a big part in the poem as well. This line is repeated all throughout the poem, “and momma’s in the bedroom with the door closed” (Lorde 469). This is

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