Different Kinds Of Love

Valentine

Shows that the narrator has animosity towards the typical gifts that are given on Valentine’s Day. She states these typical gifts as being, red roses, satin hearts and cute cards from your significant other. She thinks all these gifts lack a sense of the true meaning of love. The narrator gives her significant other an onion, she says, “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. / It promises light / like the careful undressing of love” (Duffy 3-5). The way she explains her gift is that the onion leaves a stench on you for a while like a love for another person will stay with you. Also, how the onion will make you cry when you cut into it, “it will blind you with tears / like a lover” (7-8). She uses the onion as a replacement from “normal” gifts that would make couples normally cry over. The onion is wrapped in a brown covering, its symbolizing wrapping paper hiding the real gift that she has given. When the onion is unwrapped the rings inside look as if, “it’s platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring / if you like” (19-20). She uses the word shrink which means to reduce to explain her thoughts about marriage. Almost as if marriage would weaken the love by putting a more normal tittle to describe their relationship. It is possible that the narrator was hurt in past relationships which could be the reason why she doesn’t see the “red roses or a satin heart” (1) or the “cute card or a kissogram” (12) as showing the real meaning of love.

"Wedding Ring"

The narrator states that she doesn’t know what a claddagh is, she calls it a sweetheart ring. She describes what the ring looks like,  “silver hands clasping a rounded heart,/an apple, I mistakenly thought, / topped by a crown” (McMahon 2-3). This ring is given to show love to another person or could be given as a wedding ring. She thinks of “it as my regnant pomme” (4) which means the ring has a great influence on her. The word “pomme” is a French word which means apple, this is what she described the ring at the beginning of the poem when it is actually a heart in the silver hands. She states that the clichés wring from her, they squeeze out of her. She starts talking about how all this debris that is flying around means home to her, just meaning that it’s all normal to her. The guy that gave her the ring found it in a diner in Slingo, which is a county in the Republic of Ireland. He found the ring “wedged in the cushioned booth, rejected, perhaps, or lost…” (13). She thinks maybe the lover hid the ring while rehearsing and got distracted by something else and forgets about the ring. She says she never takes the ring off.