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Analysing a whole poem
Our comments to Task C:
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The lines are orthographically deviant (a) because of their extreme
brevity compared with the rest of the poem (and with the head word
of the poem's final noun phrase being broken away from its modifiers)
and (b) because of the way in which 'alltheway' is run together without
spaces, as if the three words involved were one word. The orthographical
foregrounding is alerting us to the fact that we need to do extra
interpretative work at the end of the poem.
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The poem's final, orthographically foregrounded lines are a quotation
from the end of a traditional English nursery rhyme called 'This Little
Piggy':
This little piggy went to market.
This little piggy stayed at home.
This little had roast beef.
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went wee wee wee wee wee,
All the way home.
In Britain, this nursery rhyme is often used in a game with very small
children, usually when they are having a nappy changed or getting
ready for bed. The adult says each line of the nursery rhyme while
tweaking, in turn, four of the toes or fingers on one of the child's
feet/hands. Then, in time with the last 'this little piggy', the adult
tweaks the final toe/finger and then runs his or her fingers up the
child's body and, in time with 'all the way home', tickles the child
under the armpits or in some other ticklish spot.
 View the 'this little piggy' video clip to see what we mean.
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The allusion to the nursery rhyme when the young woman is running
home at the end of the poem helps us to confirm her extreme naivety
from the perspective of the man. Through the allusion she is being
referred to not just as if she is young and inexperienced, but as
if she is a small baby or toddler (the age of children the nursery
rhyme is usually played with).
The allusion has a strong effect because it occurs in the climactic
position at the end of the poem. It is also such a ludicrous comparison
in relation to the young woman the man has just had sex with ('made
love to' seems too romantic from his perspective at least) that it
is difficult not to believe that Roger McGough wants us to be critical
of the man's attitude and, by extrapolation, to similar attitudes
on the part of people in parallel circumstances outside the poem.
It should now be clear that this allusion is a strong factor in support
of the general interpretation which we posted in our answer to Task B.
If you want to argue for a different interpretation it will thus be important
for you to account for the allusion within your account or perhaps to
provide an argumentfor a different allusion or no allusion at all.
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