Essay- (on the poem Tall)

The poem Tall written by carol Ann Duffy is based upon a young women who doesn’t stop growing throughout her years of life and grows so tall that she outgrows the earth’s atmosphere but is still able to reach down to the service to intervene in the course of disaster. People in her society seem to think she has a magic power or some king of ‘super strength’ but she hasn’t, she’s just an extra tall woman. The poem in which describes the women and her desire to ‘fit in’ is crushed by her height, people find her abnormal because of her height which makes her flee from her town and try to hide her embarrassment by living in turret’s, which she chooses in which to try and disguise her height.
The ‘puzzle poem’ structure to ‘Tall’ is a significant sign within the poem as it has relation to a very childlike structure in which represents her non-stop growth. The selection of words at the beginning or at the end of certain stanzas in the poem defines this. For example; ‘Daily, day one, further, day two and day three’. All of these words symbolize her growth within the poem and how significant her growth is, it signifies how much she grows each day. It’s not a matter of years that she has got so tall; it’s the issue of her growing so much in one day. Furthermore the childlike theme throughout the poem is also revealed in the line ‘she needed a turret’ this shows the childlike appeal in the poem because it is a similarity to the fairy-tale ‘Rapunzel’ who lived in a turret because her hair was extremely long and a turret was the only place tall enough for her and her ‘hair’ to live in. This is essential within the poem because it gives it a simple flow from beginning to end, which signifies the stages in her life in which she just hasn’t stopped growing from when she was baby getting christened until she was a grown women drinking in the pubs and bars.
Duffys poems have a very feminist edge towards them, she writes about the historical identity in which women should follow. In the poem ‘Tall’ Duffy switches the typical sex roles in which men and women should follow, this is shown here within the poem. ‘Somebody whooped. She stooped, hands on both knees, and stared at his scared face, the red heart tattooed on his small chest. He turned and fled like a boy.’ In this stanza it has a clear indication in which the stereotypical characteristics of both sex have swapped because men are meant to have the masculine characteristics, the strength, the dominance, and the power other others or typically women. Whereas in the poem it’s the men who are scared and dominated by the lady who is extra tall, which is shown when Duffy says ‘He turned and fled like a boy’ this is said within the poem because it shows the hierarchy in which the tall women has over people and specially over the opposite sex which is very uncommon. The use of word choice in which Duffy used to describe the man had a importance to the stanza because she described the man as ‘whooping’ at her and having a ‘scared face with a red heart tattooed on his small chest’. The man was described as ‘whooping’ at the tall women and having tattoos on his chest because again these features all represent the masculinity within his identity, also the man whooped at the women which suggest he wanted to look ‘masculine’ in front of people because he wanted to act like he wasn’t scared of the woman like everybody else. When in fact he was because when the woman stooped down to his level he fled like a boy, which again shows the hierarchy in which had swapped between the man and the woman.
Another significant moment within the poem is