Need help with poem analysis!!!

[holiday]

I need to write an analytical essay on the poem "I cut my finger once on purpose" by Rita Dove. I'm in the process of trying to make sense of it all but it's quite a weird poem. I'm getting the sense that its about a girl that doesn't want to grow up like shes expected to and become like her parents. She wants to remain a little girl. Also, there seems to be a lot of family dysfunction in terms of showing emotin and trust.

Im having trouble with the fact that she has a potential daughter...what does this mean? All I have is that her daughter represents her inner child? Just anything would be great to further help me analyzise this poem...Thank you very much!!!

I Cut My Finger Once On Purpose

I'm no baby. There's no grizzly man
wheezing in the back of the closet.
When I was the only one,
they asked me if I wanted a night-light
and I said yes -
but then came the shadows.

I know they make the noises at night.

My toy monkey Giselle, I put her
in a red dress they said was mine
once - but if it was mine, why did they yell
when Giselle clambered up the porch maple
and tore it? Why would Mother say
When you grow up, I hope you have
a daughter just like you

if it weren't true, that I have a daughter
hidden in the closet - someone
they were ashamed of and locked away
when I was too small to cry.

I watch them all the time now:
Mother burned herself at the stove
without wincing. Father
smashed a thumb in the Ford,
then stuck it in his mouth for show.
They bought my brother a just-for-boys
train, so I grabbed the caboose
and crowned him - but he toppled
from his rocker without a bleat;
he didn't even bleed.

That's when I knew they were
robots. But I'm no idiot:
I eat everything they give me,
I let them put my monkey away.
When I'm big enough
I'll go in, past the boa
and the ginger fox biting its tail
to where my girl lies, waiting...
and we'll stay there, quiet,
until daylight finds us.

-Rita Dove

[Paulclem]

My impression of this poem is that the narrator is reflecting upon her childhood.

I'm no baby.
This also has an older tone - baby.

It is loaded images of mental illness and their causes- self harm, the shadows, sibling jealusy, an early awareness of sex, the translocation of the child's actions onto the monkey that tears her red dress.

These seem to lead to the murder of her brother -

but he toppled
from his rocker without a bleat;
he didn't even bleed.

Perhaps it doesn't stop there.

I'll go in, past the boa
and the ginger fox biting its tail
to where my girl lies, waiting...

This is like a mother talking of her own child. Sexuality has been mentioned, and it is stated that she has a daughter:

if it weren't true, that I have a daughter
hidden in the closet - someone
they were ashamed of and locked away
when I was too small to cry.

Why would the parents be ashamed of their grandaughter unless we have incest and perhaps a dead baby in the closet? (Alternatively you could read it that the girl in the closet is the narrator who has been mentally scared by the image. Her own little girl might be her own lost childhood).

We do also have

There's no grizzly man
wheezing in the back of the closet


no grizzly man - now, meaning there was. Wheezing is an odd way to describe a man - perhaps related to sex.

The girl cuts her finger, the mother burns her hand, the father traps his thumb. These are images of blame? The girl and mother suffer, but the man does it for show? Is he the perpetrator of incest?

In the poem, the later toys, the Boa and fox are threatening, perhaps because of where they are and what they remind her of.

So I've rambled on with my impressions of the poem, but you need to come to your own conclusions about what it all means.

I think you could successfully argue for either incest or mistreatment and withdrawal by the child.

Look at the colour light and dark. Even the light is a night light - it has some darkness about it, and of course it brings shadow.
The red dress could stand for blood - her own or her brother's.

Look at the parents- are they culpable?

There are certainly images of mental illness in the way the environment is related to, and there are references to damage that could be the mistreatment or incest.

I hope this helps. It's not very systematic, but has a few ideas.

Good luck

[keerazee]

It starts off with "I'm no baby," so - while I think it could be written from the point of view of an adult looking back at the difficulties and painful memories of childhood, I actually think it's about an older child having growing pains and expressing resentment toward having a sibling. She doesn't want to be shoved aside for the new addition to the family:

When I was the only one,
they asked me if I wanted a night-light
and I said yes -
but then came the shadows.

I know they make the noises at night.

That seems to be saying, "I used to be the focus of their life, and then they gave me a night light to keep me company, so I wouldn't go in their room and bother them. And I heard them having sex."

Then it seems she preferred her toy monkey over her new sibling - she wanted to choose her new baby (whether sibling or child), why should they be upset when the dress got ruined, when she was just making a choice of who would be her baby?

Why would Mother say
When you grow up, I hope you have
a daughter just like you

if it weren't true, that I have a daughter
hidden in the closet - someone
they were ashamed of and locked away
when I was too small to cry.

This says (to me,) that they scolded her, embarrassed about their daughter's imaginary baby, and made her put it away. But she says "yeah, I already have a daughter." She still thinks of the toy monkey as a preferred baby over the one they're expecting.

The next part expresses a puzzlement over these people, her family doesn't make sense to her anymore. They are unfeeling, unaware of hurt, especially HER hurt and jealousy. So she creates some distance from them by deciding they are robots, and consoling herself with knowing that the toy monkey is in the back of the closet waiting for her, to comfort her. It's a solace to her to go back to a time when she was the only one and could say, THIS (the toy monkey) is my baby.

and we'll stay there, quiet,
until daylight finds us.

And she'll nurse her wounds alone, without making any fuss, until the light reveals who she is and what she wants.