Little Red Cap Essay Questions

Discuss one instance of symbolism in this work.

When the speaker cuts open the wolf, she finds her grandmother's bones in his stomach. On a literal level, this detail refers to the poem's folkloric source material and heightens the stakes of the speaker's escape, implying that she might have one day met the same fate. Symbolically, however, the bones represent the intergenerational and historical impact of sexism. While the speaker herself has suffered because of the wolf, others before her have been completely destroyed by him. Moreover, their destruction has been so total that they have gone undiscussed and been forgotten.

Identify and discuss several instances of internal rhyme or slant rhyme in this poem.

In the poem's third stanza, Duffy writes "murder clues. I lost both shoes," an instance of internal rhyme, in which words rhyme within a line of poetry rather than across two or more lines. This particular instance of slant rhyme creates a rhythmic, relentless pattern of sound that mimics the speaker's steps through the woods. At the poem's end, Duffy rhymes the words "bones" and "alone." These ending sounds are slightly different from each other, making this an instance of slant rhyme rather than true rhyme. By pairing them, Duffy juxtaposes the fate of the grandmother with that of the speaker. Overall, by using these subtler forms of rhyme, Duffy gains some of the effects of rhyme while preserving a sense of candidness and informality.