The diet

• 8 stanzas of 7 lines each. internal rhyme,speed up the rhythm pushing the woman ever-onward in her diet journey eg 'dinner,thinner' . regularity line length reflects the strict nature of the woman’s diet, never managing to stray from the intense requirements of the starvation diet. The final line of each stanza is shorter than the rest, always containing an end stopthat bluntly ends each stanza. In doing this, the poem has a sense of jolted rhythm, moving forward only to be yanked back and stalled starvation to binging in a constant cycle.
• stanza six: Duffy connects parts of the body, ‘fingernail’ and ‘mouth’ with harsh plosive words, ‘kipped’ and ‘dossed’. The connection of body semantics with harsh words is emblematic of the woman’s view of her own body, the blunt plosives reflecting the negative opinion the woman has over her body, represented through the semantics used.
• stanza 1

   begins placing ‘The Diet’ central focus, asyndeton , ‘sugar, salt, dairy, fat, protein, starch’ covering every single food group. Duffy moving through food groups as if they were insignificant, reflecting the woman’s attitude towards food.
• stanza 2


  morphs into a lesser human,  sibilance across ‘starved on, stayed in, stared in’ emblematic of the brutal impact the diet is having on the woman’s body, the sound cutting through the poem as the diet cuts through the woman’s weight.
• stanza 3


  personifies ‘Anorexia’, ‘true daughter’, the use of ‘true’ insinuating the faithful obedience to the eating disorder. The capitalization and personification of ‘Anorexia’ suggest a parental influence, governing force. The use of caesura following this phrase, ‘girl, a shadow, dwindling’ create a sense of melancholy, the woman unable to stop,
• stanza 5

   metaphorical loss of control‘blown’ by the wind and taken away from her home. emblematic of the woman’s losing her battle with her eating disorder, it taking over her life and turning her into a passive object that can be controlled. The semantics of freedom within ‘fly’, ‘floated’ and ‘breeze’ seems to suggest a positive change. Yet, they are actually just reaffirming the presence of the wind, constantly acting on the woman – representing how she has become a passive participant
• stanza 7

   Volta, ‘but’ regains control. Yet, Duffy actually presents the woman falling deeper into her eating disorder. Duffy presents the woman being metaphorically eaten by someone, the very act of feeding now having overtaken her life. now binging food.
• stanza 8

  trapped inside ‘the Fat Woman now’, this idea of being encapsulated in a body that does not represent who you are reflecting the idea of body dysmorphia.

  The final line of ‘The Diet’, ’trying to get out’ uses the gerund, present progressive tense. This ‘trying’ suggests that the woman is still ongoing, trying day after day to escape the horrific cycle of binging and fasting that she has fallen into. The metaphor of being consumed represents total obsession,
• A03


  The diet industry (yes, industry) is a multi-billion dollar faculty, with the modern age only leading to further profit for corporations that base themselves within this area. Duffy using ‘The Diet’ to create a platform that explores the impacts of these disorders, presenting the chaos it can bring to an individual’s life.