Like an Heiress by Grace Nichols

• Theme - Identity and Belonging

  She sees her childhood home after years and it isn't the way that she remembers it
• Theme - Heritage

  She presents herself as an heiress to her heritage, and she is proud of it
• Theme - Climate Crisis

  Shows the devastating effect of pollution
• "Like an Heiress"

  • similie
  • not quite an heiress
  • she should be inheriting something beautiful, but it's been ruined
  • link to the idea of young people inheriting the Earth
• "Like ... light ... eye-catching"

  • assonance
  • repetition of "i" sound
  • reinforces how personal this is for the speaker
• "eye-catching jewels"

  • link to the idea of being an heiress
  • links to how the ocean catches the light
• "Atlantic draws me"

  • personification
  • humanising the ocean
  • makes the realisation of what happened to it worse
• "But the beach is deserted"

  • plosives
  • harsh realisation of reality
• "old seawall - / used car tyres, plastic bottles, styrofoam cups - "

  • cesura
  • isolates the triplet and forces the reader to focus on it
  • encourages reflection on how the beach came to be like this
  • triplet
  • speeds up pace, creates the idea that there's endless pollution
  • plosives
  • represents both her anger at the pollution and the ocean's
• "rightly tossed back by an ocean's moodswings"

  • metaphor
  • harsh verb "tossed" conveys the "anger" of the ocean
  • reinforces how unnatural and injust the pollution is for the ocean
  • personification
  • continues the personification of the ocean throughout the poem
• "the sun's burning treasury"

  • metaphor
  • "burning" referencing both the sun on the waves and how the ocean is heating up
  • continuation of the heiress metaphor
  • "treasury" connotes money, but the speaker suggests that nature is more valuable
• "heading back like a tourist"

  • similie
  • contrast between how she was like an heiress earlier
  • disconnect from her roots
  • after seeing what has happened to where she grew up, she no longer feels the connection to the beach that she did earlier
• "the sanctuary of my hotel room"

  • disconnect
  • implication that the beach should be her sanctuary, but she has to resort to the hotel after seeing what happened to the beach
• "dwell in the air-conditioned coolness"

  • double meaning
  • "dwell" - she is both in the room and thinking about how her actions are affecting the planet
  • "air-conditioned coolness"
  • irony - the air conditioning is heating up the planet
  • the irony isn't lost on the speaker, and she doesn't want it to be lost on us
  • metaphor
• "quickening years"

  • can be linked to the use of enjambment and no punctuation in the last four lines
• "our planet."

  • the last words of the poem remind readers that everyone has a responsibility for the planet
  • talking to all readers
  • end-stop
  • implication that there is a harsh end coming for the planet at this rate
• Structure

  • one stanza
  • 14 lines
  • no rhyme scheme or rhythm
• 14 lines

  • like a sonnet, in the same way that she is like an heiress
  • the poem could and should have been a love letter to her home, but it's been ruined for her
• Lexical field of environmental destruction

  • deserted
  • lone
  • wave of rubbish
  • old
  • used
  • plastic
  • styrofoam
  • burning
  • air-conditioned coolness
  • quickening years
  • fate
• Consonance

  • Atlantic
  • oceanic
  • back
  • sanctuary
  • quickening
• Enjambment

  • Lots of use towards the end of the room
  • Speeds up the pace
  • reminds readers of the danger that the planet is in
  • When read aloud, does not give a reader time to breath
  • could be linked to air pollution