Arnav Rawal 8A

Meeting Midnight Analysis

Meeting Midnight Analysis Meeting Midnight by Carol Ann Duffy is a poem about a person meeting midnight and following her around the city/town. The message that Carol Ann Duffy is trying to convey to the reader is that midnight is a very beautiful, stylish/classy, playful and mysterious time of day. In this essay, I will be focusing on choice of words, personification and rhythm. She has also chosen many more interesting poetic devices such as rhyme and repetition. In this paragraph, I will be writing about the choice of words that Carol Ann Duffy has chosen to make her poem more interesting and show how stylish, beautiful and playful midnight is. In stanza 1, she chose Frost, sparkling, dark-blue, hood, winked and cheroot. These words help the readers to understand how stylish/classy she is. In stanza 2, she chose shuffle, dance, river to show that she walks in a very classy way and that she is doing something mysterious. In stanza 3, she chose Purple, Edge and wept because she wanted to show that midnight was different to other things and times of the day. The poem Meeting midnight also contains a lot of personification. In stanza 1 and 2, she chose I met midnight, she wore a dark blue raincoat, smoked a small cheroot, shuffle and dance. She used personification to help the readers understand more clearly how midnight would be. If she didnt use personification, it would be a lot harder to explain/create an image in the readers minds how playful/mysterious and classy/stylish midnight is. In the last two stanzas, Carol Ann Duffy didnt use any personification at all. I think this is because she had already made it clear to the readers that midnight is a person rather than a time of day. Rhythm has also been used to help convey the message. She used this to show that midnight is going somewhere mysterious or is afraid of something. In stanza 1, the rhythm shows that midnight is walking at a steady pace. In stanza 2, midnight walks at a slow pace with little pauses maybe to look back or to do something. In stanza 3, the rhythm changes to a very fast pace. This has been quite hard to notice but once the reader has noticed it, it will help the reader understand her main message. Summarizing this essay, Carol Ann Duffy has conveyed many messages but I think that the main one is that midnight is very beautiful, stylish, playful and mysterious. This has happened successfully because of the styles of writing she chose and figurative language. Even though there were many to choose from I thought the most important ones were choice of words, personification and Rhythm.