Kate Light Objectification

The unsparing use of objectification in Kate Light’s renowned lyric poem, “You Must Accept”, brews a disgusted tone that ultimately reduces the poem’s subject to a thing rather than a person. In degrading the work’s unnamed muse and likening him to inanimate articles – and worthless ones at that – Light’s agitation rises to the forefront of the poem; she believes this man to be inutile to an inhuman extreme. Light opens the poem by begging another unnamed figure to “accept [that is] who he really is”, (Light 1), referring to the anonymous man as “that”. In doing so, Light reveals the extent of her own revulsion and creates a disgusted tone from the poem’s onset; according to Light, this unnamed being is not a person, but an object to be jilted and, as such, does not deserve pronouns, let alone the love of the poem’s target. …show more content…
After the third line, the poem abruptly changes from dialogue to description as Light launches into a spirited rant that describes the object of her ire as “a canvas on which paint never dries, a clay that never sets, steel that bends in a breeze (and) a melody that when it ends, no one can whistle”, (Light 4-7). This semantic division conjures an image of Light herself angrily ranting, no longer at the poem’s intended audience, but at herself, as she is now lost in her own emotion, making her disgust palpable. As a final blow to the source of her repugnance, Light concludes her work by stating, “You have to... see what he is; how it is killing you”, (Light 15-16). Well-intentioned as it may seem, this line holds more than friendly