How Has Gray Invited His Audience to Experience Ideas of Discovery and Rediscovery and Highlighted That Idea That the Impact of Discovery Can Be Far- Reaching and Transformative

Diptych.

How has Gray invited his audience to experience ideas of discovery and rediscovery and highlighted that idea that the impact of discovery can be far- reaching and transformative.

Discovery and rediscovery is a massive part in a human’s life, without discovering or rediscovering a person can’t grow as a person. Robert Grays poem’s “Diptych” and “Meatworks,” both express the impact of discovery     Robert Grays poem “Diptych” is a very personal poem. The poem is representing his mother and father relations between themselves and the connect they had with Gray himself. “Diptych” is a poem that is broken up in to two parts, the first part beings his insight of his mother, the second is his insight of his father. This is to be thought as two portraits placed next to each other, always having some sort of connection to one another.

 Throughout the whole poem, Gray uses a mix of anecdotes and observations about his parents to reveal their identities to the audience.

In the first stanza, the poem beings with a personal anecdote about what happened one night. The first line reads “My mother told me she had often stayed awake…” the use of the word “mother” is representing that the poem starts off as Gray being an adult. The audience can tell that Grays mother is very alone and isolated. The words “Often stayed awake” is suggesting that she often stayed awake waiting for Grays father to return home from the pub, the word “often” is highlighting her long suffering. In the 7th line of the poem “miles, in his state” is emphasising that Grays mother cares about her husband but Is constantly annoyed and what’s to leave.  In the next couple of lines “or sleep in the weeds by the road” “if no-one dropped him at our gate,” are all examples of Gray being an imagist. As the poem continues you can see that the mother is a carer. The poem resumes his telling of the tale with the lines “this other night” which is suggesting a conversational tone to the reader. The anecdote technique returns when he tells a story about his mother biting a head off a lizard. “That bitterness” is an example of a double entendre. The double meaning is the bitterness of the lizard’s blood is representing the bitterness in her marriage. In the next line “she running onto the verandah to spit,” shows his sympathy for his mother. At the end of the first stanza the last lines, “and standing there, spat dry, seeing across the silent, frosty bush the distance lights of town had die,” is highlighting the image of her sadness in her marriage.

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