Conjoined

In the poem Conjoined by Judith Minty, there are literary devices used to capture her feelings, She uses literary device known as metaphors to explain her feelings towards an unhappy marriage. Through out the whole poem she explains how the unhappy marriage is being compared to all of the other things that have been conjoined together. 

     Minty uses three metaphors, each comparing marriage to a "freak" of some sort. While being conjoined isn't necessarily a bad thing, the poet's word choice shows how it is not a successful or a healthy one, just as her marriage. Minty gives her readers something to think about other than the happily ever stories after one usually hears in reference to marriage. The first metaphor she utilizes an analogy to compare her marriage to a wedding cake (lines 1-4). The cake is a monster, with two beasts in one skin. The couple is fighting for their space, pressing against one another. The lines could also interpret as two wholes trying to form one another human being. She uses the term "deformed". Marriage is supposed to be a combination between two people who, through years of bonding, grow to know one another so well they are almost like one. By using the word "pressed," it seems as if this bond was being forced between the speaker and her husband and therefore it grew to be "flat" and "deformed," which gives it more of a negative meaning to the marriage which resembles something like clingy, along with the fact that Minty calls it a "monster", revealing that the speaker is going through a painful and dreadful marriage. 

     The second metaphor is used to compare her marriage to a two-headed calf, "an accident, like the two-headed calf rooted in one body." From these choice of words, we can see that her marriage was not meant to work out, and sort of occured by fault. The marriage is then to Siamese twins, "or like those other freaks, Chang and Eng, twins joined at the chest by skin and muscle, doomed." This could illustrate a picture of a circus sideshow in the readers mind. It lends a sense of silliness to the idea of marriage, as well as a sense of a lack of  performance in the marriage. The example of conjoined twins describes the agony and pain of being joined physically with someone without getting away from them. These twins go through life never alone, never with one moment of peace. To feel the agitation of knowing they can never be seperated from one of the other is beyond the patience of what most people can handle. Such a permanent joining of two uniquely different beings drives the image of suffering into the mind. 

      The three examples of bad deformed unions lead into the third stanza where the real story of the unhappy marriage becomes known. The woman feels the man moving around in the house below her. She knows he can sense her moves. “Do you feel the skin that binds us together as we move, heavy in this house?”(10-11) is another reference of two combined into one. They slink around on different levels of their home as if hiding from one another, but know exactly where the other is at all times. This shows that they are connected under the skin by their marriage just like the onion example. They are unable to be separated just like the twins example.

     The main emphasis created in these metaphors is used to show the lack of peace that the twins and married couple share.  These metaphors show that she feels "conjoined" to her husband and she cannot escape him. Such anguish is felt in these words, “To sever the muscle could free one, but might kill the other.” The reference of being cut apart and separating the two is brought out so plainly and so skillfully that feelings of remorse surface for the pair. Escape is out of the question as the couple is connected. This escape though has entered into mind even with the cost of the life of the other member. “We cannot escape each other.”  The perfect ending for this dreary poem. It is the logical conclusion and finalizes the whole assumption of this poem. The two becoming one in matrimony, forever joined now under the skin. The finality of the whole poem of the two becoming one “Conjoined” entity brings such gloom over the reader.There is nothing to be done, as there is no escape.

     As you can see Minty uses metaphors through out the entire fifteen lines of her marriage poem. Although many poems about marriage are full of life and happiness, but this one has a cloud of gloom and doom hanging over it. It is a sad piece of artwork that shows the unhappy side of a bad marriage. Pity and remorse are two emotions that come to the surface when reading. A short and compact poem that has many emotions packed in very tightly. It forces thoughts and revisions to come into mind.