The Gun Flashcards
Bringing a gun into a house/changes it.’
end stop - suggests certainty of irreversible change, emphasis on ambiguous ‘it’ to suggest nature of change is unknown and so, deeply dangerous
‘stretched out like something dead’
Simile - irony as the gun causes death - emphasis on the gun’s power of destruction
‘wood stock/ jutting over the edge’
Enjambment represents how the gun, being inside the house symbolises a barrier being crossed, its a transgressive act, reiterated by ‘jutting over the edge’. Sense of speaker’s rising emotion
‘grey shadow’ ‘green-checked cloth’
Juxtaposing colour imagery - grey shadow = looming specter of death whereas green = life
‘perforating tins/dangling on orange string/from trees in the garden’
A childlike, more innocent image, sharply juxtaposed with following ‘rabbit shot/clean through the head’ -
‘rabbit shot/clean through the head.’
End stop emphasises the finality of death - conveys a sense of chilling precision
‘your eyes gleam/like when sex was fresh’
Simile to emphasis that the effects of shooting something provides speaker with pleasurable exhilaration, likened to sex. - connect to primitive version of self
‘A gun brings a house alive.’
Structure - statement links to first line - makes statement stark, initially we don’t know what is loaded - is the change good or bad? Now, ironically it reveals ‘it’ (gun) brings him life
‘You’ to ‘I join in on the cooking’
Shift in perspective - second person to first / intradiegetic narrator exists in the story, initially dissociates himself from the acts of killing but ends however with a sinister connection to his pray, literally consuming the experience, suggests he is complicit.
‘jointing/and slicing, stirring and tasting-‘
Graphic nature of speaker’s transgression, highlighting it’s methodological and he relishes in the brutal process
‘King of Death’
Metaphor - personification of death, highlights speaker’s awe, giving death a regal title
‘stalking/out of winter woods,/his black mouth/sprouting golden crocuses’
Stalking - connotations of predator - winter represents death
