Never Go Back

Question 1

Theme:

Question 2

‘Living dead drink all day and a jukebox reminisces in a cracked voice there is nothing to say’

Answer 2

-the gloomy introduction with reference to ‘living dead’. The oxymoron may be an exaggeration but the idea of humans without souls drinking ‘all day’ suggests unemployment and purposeless lives
-the personified jukebox reminisces in a ‘cracked voice’ which suggests it is damaged or broken like the negative memories it evokes
-jukebox’s belong to a past era and the fact that ‘there is nothing to say’ indicates emotional or spiritual emptiness

Question 3

‘You talk for hours in agreed motifs, anecdotes shuffled and dealt from a well-thumbed pack’

Question 4

‘A taxi implying a hearse takes you slowly’

Question 5

‘The driver looks like death’

Question 6

‘At a red light, you wipe a slick cold sweat from the glass for a drenched whore to state you full in the face’

Question 7

‘You go for a drink realised by a journey into nowhere, no when, and all the way home you forget’

Question 8

‘Sly sums of money wink at you in the cab’

Question 9

‘The smoky mirrors flatter; your ghost buys a round for the parched, old faces of the past. Never return to the space where you left time pining till it died’

Answer 9

-the ‘smoky mirrors’ is a metaphor for the avoidance of harsh truths. The haziness means it can’t reflect back a clear reality of what happened. “Smoke and mirrors” is an expression used to mean obscuration or deception
-the past is negative. The ‘ghost’ (memory of a loved companion or the speaker herself) tries to relate to the people they knew but now are ‘parched old faces’. Despite the all-day drinking, they are only shrivelled, valueless memories
-the imperative ‘never return’ is the essence of the message of the poem
-refers to ‘space’ rather than a place which suggests something solid and tangible, where ‘space’ is empty and meaningless

Question 10

Summary:

Answer 10

Duffy explores the past and the bad memories associated with time and place, where things ended badly for her. She is either physically returning to the past or visiting the places in her memory. It is clearly emotionally dangerous to go back.