¶ … Golden" and "The Erl-King"
My favorite quote in "Golden" by Ariel Smith is "I lean over / big, shiny smile wasted on you" -- it really drives home the fact that the prostitute is a person too who has value and meaning and that what she has is actually more valuable than the person in the car looking for sex. She gives him a smile to attract, but the transaction is empty and for a measly chunk of change. There is nothing real or substantial in the interaction; there is no hint of a possible outcome like that in a traditional, healthy relationship between a man and a woman; there is no likelihood of courtship or marriage; thus, her smile (her charms) are wasted on this guy who is simply looking to "hook up." It makes the reader sympathize with her and wonder what her life would be like if only there were a man on whom that smile would not be wasted.
My favorite quote from "The Erl-King" by Angela Carter is "His embraces were his enticements and yet, oh yet! they were the branches of which the trap itself was woven" -- it really signifies the complexity of the love-relationship, the way in which a couple becomes one; only here the narrator does not want to be caught in this love-embrace, though she does love the King; she does not want to be turned into one of the trapped birds in the King's cages; thus, even though she wants to enjoy his arms and his embrace, she recognizes that they...
The "blueblack cold" of a winter morning suggests the touch of cold and the sight of blue frost in the darkness. The "cracked hands" of the father who labors for his living appeals to a sense of cold, harsh touch. The son can "hear the cold splintering" and feel the "banked fires blaze," a contrast of the cold sound of ice and the warm crackling fire, and the contrasting
" (lines 20-21) the journalist, the activist... must be the observer and not make the news. Lastly the point-of-view of the unnamed dead, "enemy" whose ears were cut off to use an example of cruelty and to elicit fear, "Some of the ears on the floor/caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on / the floor were pressed to the ground." (lines 31-33) Perhaps the ears were
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