The Duke manipulates language throughout the monologue, only offhandedly saying what he means throughout. He reveals that he did love his late wife when he gets lost in admiration as he describes her. However, it quickly turns when he remembers “all and each would draw from her alike the approving speech.” Using euphemisms, the duke indirectly admits to having his wife murdered by saying, “I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together.” Smiles symbolize his wife’s life, as she smiled at everything, until she died. The monologue is an example of the aristocracy of his time, revealing to the reader the lengths some people will take for power and money. The Duke feels entitled by the fact that he owns a nine-hundred-year old name and has his
