Robles 2
Joseann J. Robles
Prof. Mongar
INGL 3104-141
May 12, 2003
Victim of Love
In the poem, Say You Love Me, Molly Peacock presents a family situation. She wants to present a sad situation as a result of the family problems or disorders in the members who compose it. Peacock uses the elements of poetry to make her interpretations, to understand what is happening in the family. She uses that method so as to not give away any concrete explanation of what is going on. Peacock uses symbols as hints to the reader, which are hidden in the verses of the poem.
One of these is: What is wrong with the father of the poem? In the fifth, sixth and seventh strophe there is a statement that, maybe, can explain what happens with the father; “Do you? was beginning to peel, as of live layers of skin, age from age from age from him until he gazed through hysteria as a wet baby thing repeating, Do you love me? Say you do, in baby chokes, only loud, for they came from a man.” Those statements maybe meant a child trauma of a love deficit. If that is true, the father, that is already drunk, is trying to get some love words from his daughter. Maybe his wife can save the daughter from the anger of her father, just give him what he wants to hear, but she can not, she is not there. Who would be the saved person, the father or the daughter? No one can know the answer to that question, but that is the trick, the reader needs to make his/her own interpretations.
In another strophe, the eighth, the daughter says: “rich father, not fill the narrowed zone, empty except for confusion until the size of my fear ballooned as I saw his eyes, blurred, taurean…” The girl is saying the money is not what a daughter wants from a father; she is thirsty of love. The statement is evidence that she does not want to feel confused or filled of fear. It make emphasize on the argument that says, the girl is the only victim in this situation, only because the poem never says that the father is passing through a trauma or a depression, it only says that he is drunk. The point of view of the poem was made from the daughter feelings, not from the father. The speaker is trying to show her feelings, but the author is using, at the same time, the feelings of the speaker and the actions of the father to explain the origin of the situation. Is not, just, that the father is drunk.
Another symbolism on the poem, and maybe the most important of all, is on the last sentence of the poem. “There was no world out there, so there we remained, completely alone.” There is where the reader needs to make his/her final conclusion:
1) The victim is the daughter
2) The victim are both, the father and the daughter
What conclusion is better? The reader, only the reader, can choose because the word “we” on that statement can be used to include only the daughters excluding the father, or to include either the father. The father maybe has some childhood traumas, maybe not. The poem does not say anything about it specifically. Only present the feelings of the daughter and the situation, excluding the feelings of the father. But, why the father needs to hear that somebody leaves to the reader a mystery hidden in a symbolism, “…there was no world out there…” The reader know that in fact, outside there is a lot of people, they are not alone but, nobody can bring some help to a mental disease that is living in the psyche of the victims in the poem.
The reader does not know the true answer to the mystery involved with the characters and hidden with symbolisms. The reader can only make his/her own conclusions interpreting the symbolism at his/her own. Looking in that way, Molly Peacock performs the symbolism element of her poem well.