Mean Time Essay Questions

Discuss one use of alliteration or assonance in this poem.

The phrase "bleak streets" is an instance of assonance, since each of the two words uses the same internal vowel sound. In this case, assonance helps to create a feeling of relentless repetition. This is true especially because Duffy uses two one-syllable words, and surrounds the assonant E sounds with sharp, abrupt consonants, leading to a sound effect that is both harsh and unremitting. This, in turn, helps evoke the speaker's feelings of despair and despondency.

How does Duffy use personification in this poem?

The most prominent instance of personification in this work concerns time. Time is described as a malevolent agent here, taking away from the speaker's happiness and making it impossible to correct or reverse past mistakes. The speaker recalls that the clocks "stole light from my life," and longs for the sky to "lift/more than an hour from this day." Meanwhile, the poem's title hints that time itself can be "mean" in the sense of spiteful or unkind. Thus through personification, the speaker's dismay about the passage of time comes to feel more vivid, intense, and urgent.