+

GCSE English Literature Unit 2

Understanding Poetry

+Images of love…

+What other images of love can you

think of…?

+“Valentine” by Carol Ann Duffy

+“I give you an onion…”

This suggests Duffy is criticising conventional ideas and

empty gestures of love.

She is promising her lover, and the reader that her love

is more original, honest and true.

Duffy shows her wit and poetic cleverness by managing

to keep the extended metaphor of the onion being like

her love going throughout the poem.

By doing this Duffy turns an ordinary object, an 'onion'

into an unusual symbol of love, and makes it seem a

more appropriate symbol than traditional Valentine gifts.

How would you

feel if you were

offered an

onion on

Valentine’s

Day?

+Language Analysis

Re-read the poem.

Which language choices do you consider to

be interesting, unusual or significant to the

theme of love and relationships?