The Diet

Question 1

What is it about?

Answer 1

Describes the consequence of dieting as a result of not being content with body image. A critic of societal views on how women should look.

Question 2

‘the diet worked like a dream’

Answer 2

Simile
Starts like a common diet- can lead to an addiction
Lures the reader into a sense of optimism but dream has connotations of danger and lacking reality.

Question 3

‘she was all eyes, all cheekbones, had guns for hips’

Answer 3

Asyndetic listing
See the physical detriment of dieting
Increasingly slim- pointing up
Link ‘guns for hips’ to danger and phrase childbearing hips
On the following line it reinforces how extreme the change is and the expenses of dieting (new clothes)

Question 4

‘she was Anorexia’s true daughter’

Answer 4

Personifies
Emphases on power
She finds identity in the illness

Question 5

'’the height of a thimble…the wind blew her away’

Answer 5

Hyperbolic
Loss of control/power
The wind could be a metaphor for societal pressure
Abstract image
Weak

Question 6

‘inside the Fat Woman now, trying to get out’

Answer 6

The other extreme
Viscous cycle
Can’t escape the problems with body image
Capitalized so becomes her name- her body image is her identity

Question 7

Link to Streetcar

Answer 7

Blanche is obsessed with body image and is never content linking to the woman.