Stealing Carol Ann Duffy

Objectives  To understand why the speaker does the things he does  To be able to comment on the use of language and structure in the poem

Glossary  Repetition – repeating a word or a phrase more than once for an effect  Alliteration – the repetition of the same letter at the start of a word  Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds in a line (a, e, I, u sounds)

Starter  Why do people steal?  Can any crime be justified?

Carol Ann Duffy The poet wrote this poem after she saw her neighbours build a traditional snowman for their children, which was then stolen.

Stealing  Read the poem through twice.  As you read the poem, think about why the speaker steals things in the first place.

Assonance Duffy uses assonance in the first stanza to describe the snowman.  Highlight this example and comment on what this tells us about the thief.

The Thief and the Snowman  Why does the speaker want the snowman in the first place?  Why does the thief compare his brain with the snowman’s brain?  Why does he take the time to rebuild the snowman in stanza 4?

Stanza 2  What does the first line tell us about the speaker?  The final two lines of the stanza tell us something important about the speaker’s attitude. What is it?

Crime might pay  Highlight some of the things the speaker does that are against the law in stanza 3 and 4.  What do these thefts or actions tell us about the thief?

‘Again. Again.’ Why does the poet repeat these words in the fourth stanza? What do we learn about the speaker’s feelings?

Structure The poem is written in the form of a dramatic monologue. This is where a speaker talks at length to the audience. We get to see what they are thinking.  The poet uses two rhetorical questions, one at the start and one at the end. Who is the thief speaking to?

Assessment Using what you have learned today, answer the following the question?  What do we learn about the speaker in the poem ‘Stealing’?