Revision: Carol Ann Duffy - Little Red Cap
Little Red Cap
Background
The poem Little Red Cap is among others where Duffy has based this poem on a fairytale story, in this case, Little Red Riding Hood. The story is based on a young girl who is tricked by a wolf and ends up being eaten but later saved by a woodcutter.
Duffy's poem has a few differences to the original version of the story. For example, this poem uses imagery to create a very sexual feeling, where as the original fairytale was not in any way sexual, but had a more simplistic idea of good v. bad.
The wolf in this poem is portrayed to the reader as a 'good' character, and Little Red Cap as the 'sly' one who appears to know what she is doing in order to get what she wants.
Language and Features Key Points
Imagery
The title of the poem grabs your attention and reminds you of Little Red Riding Hood, a children's story. This is clever, as it sets the readers mind to thinking about the story, which means that the reader can connect all of the similarities in the poem to the children's story, for example; "What big eyes he had! What teeth!"
In the first stanza of the poem, Duffy starts off with the metaphor "At childhood's end". This portrays that childhood is so powerful it has been described as a physical place.
A good example of the imagery Duffy has used in this poem is, "Away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place". The way she has used these words makes the image very clear for the reader to imagine exactly what the Wolf’s lair must be like, a nasty place, away from the protection and safety of her home.
There is a lot of imagery throughout the poem to portray to the reader that little red cap has lost her innocence. Left it behind at the end of her childhood. "My stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch". This powerful use of the color red may symbolize the passion in this very sexual part of the poem, or perhaps even blood.
Duffy uses more color later in the poem "where a wall was crimson, gold, and aglow with books", this imagery arguably does not mean that she has a passion for the color or the wall in a physical sense, but reinforces the point that she has a passion for learning.
Structure
The stanzas throughout the poem are irregular. Stanza 5 is the longest one in the poem
and the rushed enjambment of the words gives the reader a sense of excitement.
Character Interpretations - WOLF
The wolf is initially portrayed as a 'bad' character, perhaps because that is the role in which is usual, however we learn that the wolf isn't as 'bad' as we first predicted, which differs to the original tale. "It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf". By writing it in this way, the emphasis is drawn to the word 'I' meaning little red cap. If she has changed the syntax and written "it was there where I first saw the wolf", the emphasis would have been more on the wolf, and at this stage Duffy isn't ready to completely introduce the wolf, only to let the reader hear what Little red cap thinks of him.