3. the man with night sweats

• poem summary

  speaker's experience with aids

  stages tension between younger, fearless version of himself with less inhibition and the exposure/vulnerability of speaker's current paranoid state
• poem context

  thom gunn lost many friends to aids
• i wake up cold

  chilled to the bone with anxiety (manifestation of his night sweats)

  melancholic atmosphere created from poem's outset
• i, who prospered through dreams of heat wake to their residue

  contrast between younger, formidable self (+ abandon of his younger days) and older, weaker self
• sweat, and a clinging sheet

  metaphor: resembles a death shroud

  speaker is an augury of death in his own life, embalmed in the shroud of his bed
• my flesh was its own shield / where it was gashed, it healed

  rhyming couplet: proves that any obstacle posed to the body can be overcome by the body's sheer might

  shield: body used to be able to protect itself, near-invincible

  speaker perceived his immune system as a weapon for self-protection when he was younger
• i adored / the risk that made robust

  guttural 'r' alliteration: underscores positive relationship between threat and resilience than can coexist within a healthy body

  risk: coming out as gay

  robustness: exhilaration after coming out

  younger speaker liked risk — he avoids it now (past tense: made)
• a world of wonders

  harmonious alliterative pair: captures speaker's journey of self-discovery

  he was in awe of the world

  he had a generative attitude to life
• i cannot but be sorry this given shield was cracked

  present-tense tone: apologetic, passive (in contrast with the confidence of the past): testament to his heightened state of insecurity

  sorry: feebleness, patheticness (
• )

  cracked: body is vulnerable, ruined
• cracked / wrecked


  dodgy half-rhymes: gusto and harmoniousness of youth has completely dissipated

  hairline fractures even in poetic form: 'cracked / wrecked' instead of 'heat / sheet' from younger days
• my flesh reduced and wrecked

  guttural alliteration: abrasive, grating sonic texture

  this is where speaker's physically painful experiences protrude through

  reflects how the speaker' has moved from his joyful past to his painful present
• i have to change the bed / but catch myself instead


  any movement/motion can overwhelm speaker, catatonic with fear, now
• hugging my body to me


  body is a separate object:

  dichotomy between the body and the mind, testament to the alienation he feels within himself
• the pains that will go through me

  modal verb: speaker definitive in his resignal to pain

  definite of psychological & physical torment to come
• as if hands were enough / to hold an avalanche off


  aspirate h alliteration: demonstrates speaker's breathless, fatigued state

  speaker is so frail he has become out of breath

  here, our beleaguered speaker expresses his piteous and futile wish to single-handedly prevent the spread of the AIDS epidemic
• what can you say about the form of the poem

  quatrains alternate with 2 line couplets

  the poem's oscillation between stanza length speaks to a speaker toggling between past and present

  elegy form (for a dead person)

  elicits pathos in the reader, leaving them helpless and piteous in the face of the speaker's disease
• quotes for paragraph on theme: body could protect itself fearlessly when speaker was younger


  dreams of heat

  speaks to the intensity and abandon of younger years

  my flesh was its own shield

  his body was a formidable resistor until it wasn't

  world of wonders

  harmonious alliterative pairs: speaks to speaker's idealist view of the world

  risk that made robust

  youth = fearlessness, ignorance of negative repercussions

  alternate rhymes

  emphasises that the speaker's strength before vastly supersedes that of him now
• quotes for paragraph on theme: as speaker grew up, body became more frail and delicate

  shield being cracked

  jovial abandon has withered away

  my flesh reduced and wrecked

  flesh has been reduced to nothing more than a shroud

  but catch myself instead

  adverb: illustrates how the speaker cannot even attempt to do the things he once had the luxury of doing freely

  rhyme scheme

  alternate rhymes changing to half-rhymes

  cracked/wrecked

  dental alliteration/harsh consonance
• quotes for paragraph on theme: speaker's tiredness and fear

  the pain that will go through me

  
  

  hugging my body

  
  

  aspirate h alliteration

  speaker is out of breath → cannot keep up with the most menial of life's tasks

  
  

  disrupted rhyme scheme

  evinces speaker's fear and paranoia

  hold an avalanche off

  avalanche serves as a metaphor for his impending, looming, ominous, leering death
• personal interpretation of poem

  never give up: speaker's mental resilience to life supersedes his physical feebleness
• overarching themes


  sickness

  death and morality

  solitude

  suffering

  mind/body distinction