How Does Duffy Use Over-Arching Metaphor In Valentine

In the poems, Let me describe for you her eyes by Glenn Colquhoun, and Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy, the readers understanding of love and relationships is developed by the authors effective use of language features to convey their ideas to the reader. Both Colquhoun and Duffy use over-arching metaphors, unpredictable words and irregular structure to effectively convey their ideas of love and relationships, and help the reader understand their thoughts and ideas on the subject.

Both writers use an over-arching metaphor to represent love. In Valentine, this metaphor is the onion that appears in several lines of the poem. The onion is supposed to represent the pain and hurting of love, as onions are known for being able to make you cry. This is mentioned in the poem in the line, …show more content…
Duffy compares the onion to a lover using a simile to help us understand why they may have chosen the onion as their metaphor. Another reason Duffy may have chosen this as their over-arching metaphor is because love has layers, just like an onion, and you have to carefully unwrap it and get past all of the layers of hurt, pain and sadness to get to the heart of love, as shown in the