While Chopping Red Peppers Analysis

Marionettists are secret masters of manipulation-- they control their precious puppets from above the stage, rarely being seen themselves. They have mastered the art of (cant think of the exact word rn) personifying behaviors onto their puppets. Through the use of symbolic images, and colors, the speaker of “While Chopping Red Peppers” conveys the message that she loathes her father’s controlling nature with how other people will perceive her.

The imagery of the poem creates a connection between the food and the father and the daughter. As the speaker says that her father is the “space between” her knife and fingertips, a silhouette of the father’s head appears on a pepper being brought to the foreground of the screen (Ankerson). The silhouette represents the shadow the father is casting over the speaker by creating an emphasis on “presentation” (Ankerson). The transformation of a piece of broccoli into a figure of the speaker creates another connection with food (Ankerson). The broccoli was a part of the color palette that appears when talking about presentation, therefore, the father’s concern with presentation of food also extends …show more content…
The speaker feels like her father’s “puppet”, and this feeling is displayed through the words and the depictions of the speaker’s figure connected to marionette control bars by strings (Ankerson). The speaker is struggling to feel independent; her father is controlling how she acts.
The audio of the poem is as important to understanding the poem as the images. Throughout the video, the speaker uses a monotone voice to narrate the poem, creating a cold and distant tone even when she should sound eager about escaping her father’s toxic grasp by moving “a thousand physical miles” from him (Ankerson). The emotionless tone demonstrates her struggle to become her own person while her father constantly tells her what she should be