Gretel in Darkness Essay Questions

Describe this poem's use of rhyme.

Rather than use full end-rhymes, Louise Glück opts for slant rhyme and internal rhyme. In doing so she preserves the poem's internal, raw tone while still creating a haunting repetitiveness. Slant rhymes, like "forest" and "earnest," or "still" and "real," are made even subtler by Glück's choice to place them within a line rather than at the close of a line. Thus, readers may not even notice these rhymes, instead absorbing them subconsciously. This subtlety also keeps the poem from developing the nursery-rhyme or lullaby-like sound qualities that might be traditionally associated with children's tales. Therefore, the poet creates momentum and repetition, but makes clear that she intends to adapt her fairytale source material for a sophisticated and distinctly non-childlike audience.

Discuss the theme of trauma in "Gretel in Darkness," and analyze the relationship of this theme to the poem's imagery.

Gretel's trauma causes her to feel that the stressful events in her past are unceasing. Therefore, even though the dangers that once threatened her and her brother have been nullified (and, in fact, even though Gretel feels overwhelming guilt for killing her enemy), she continues to feel unsafe. In order to demonstrate the fact that the speaker still feels immersed in the past, Glück amplifies vivid images from Gretel's past while keeping images of her present muted and nonspecific. Complex images layering visual and auditory details, such as "the witch's cry break[s] in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar," accompany Gretel's flashbacks to the past. Her present, however, is conveyed through nonspecific visual images, such as "summer afternoons you look at me as though you meant to leave," reflecting the primacy of past over present in Gretel's own experience.