Disgrace by Carol Ann Duffy
Sample
Stanza Analysis
‘But one day we woke to our Begins with a fronted conjunction as if in a middle of a
disgrace, our house a coldness story
of rooms, each nursing a It seems the couple has been struggling for a while, but
thickening cyst of dust and they woke up (metaphorically and literally) to the
gloom. We had not been home realisation that they have reached the end.
in our hearts for months’ The ‘disgrace’ they wake up to is more than the house,
but also the relationship
‘disgrace’ – repeated in stanza 8 to emphasise, gives
the poem a sense if circularity
Repeated references to death and disease
Contradicts the traditional saying, ‘home is where the
heart is’. The home is diseased, similar to the hearts
present in the relationship
Sample
Stanza Analysis
‘But one day we woke to our Begins with a fronted conjunction as if in a middle of a
disgrace, our house a coldness story
of rooms, each nursing a It seems the couple has been struggling for a while, but
thickening cyst of dust and they woke up (metaphorically and literally) to the
gloom. We had not been home realisation that they have reached the end.
in our hearts for months’ The ‘disgrace’ they wake up to is more than the house,
but also the relationship
‘disgrace’ – repeated in stanza 8 to emphasise, gives
the poem a sense if circularity
Repeated references to death and disease
Contradicts the traditional saying, ‘home is where the
heart is’. The home is diseased, similar to the hearts
present in the relationship
