Essay 4

This piece was my best work because I got a good grade on it. I thought I was going to do bad because I hade to evaluate each line of a poem. My comprehension skills are not the same as my teacher's. I felt really good about this assignment but I could not write a 700 word essay about a poem.

Laura James
Evelyn Beck
English 102
2 December 2006
Conjoined: An Unhappy Marriage

“Conjoined” by Judith Minty is a blank verse poem which uses a lot of metaphors that describe a broken relationship. It tells how the writer is unhappy and to leave would tear the other apart. The poem gives you a feeling of despair and general unhappiness.
The first few lines puts into play how the writer feels about the other. “The onion in my cupboard, a monster actually two joined under one transparent skin: each half-round, then flat and deformed where it pressed and grew against the other” (lines 1 thru 4). I see the onion as a personification of the couple and as their relationship is growing it becomes flat and deformed because she feels smothered. Because of this she is calling her relationship a monster. The skin on the onion is the marriage. At one time the two bodies were separate and when married they conjoined. As their relationship grew things started to go bad or she seemed that it has. I see the personalities of the two trying to come together but there is no resolution so it gets ugly like a monster.
The poem also uses the metaphor, “An accident like the two-headed calf rooted in one body; fighting to suck its mother’s teats;”(lines 5 thru 6). I see a lot of fighting or arguing. It states an accident like the relationship should have never happened. “Or like those other freaks, Chang and Eng, twins joined at the chest by skin and muscle, doomed to live, even make love, together for sixty years”(lines 7 thru 9). The skin and muscle is to Chang and Eng like the onion skin is to the author’s relationship.
“Do you feel the skin that binds us together as we move, heavy in this house?”(lines 10 and 11). This tells of the mood of the environment. There is tension in the house which describes the skin in this case. It is stuffy and tight. No room for air. I feel she is trying to tell us she is smothered in the relationship. He gives her no room to be herself. Maybe he expects her to be a certain way and she can not be who she truly is and this is how she feels about it. She doesn’t come right out and tell her partner how she feels but shows signs.
“To sever the muscle could fee one, but might kill the other”(lines 12 and 13). This clearly states she wants out of the relationship, but it could deeply hurt the other. At first I thought they were both miserable but now it seems just one wants out but is scared about how it would affect the other. It might not kill the person literally but may kill their soul especially if they truly don’t know how the person who is distraught feels. They may think everything in the relationship is fine. A good reason why communication is very important in any kind of relationship.
In the last part of the poem it states, “Ah, but men don’t slice onions in the kitchen, seldom see what is invisible. We cannot escape each other.”(lines 13 thru 15). You can take that a lot of ways. One way is when you peel or slice onions you cry because of the order burns your eyes. He might take the crying as just the onions. But on the other hand I think that she uses the onions as a cover up to help release her frustrations of the relationship. The cannot leave one another by divorce, separation, or etc. Because of this she seems bound for life. One thing this poem points out in my opinion is how important communication is in any relationship as I stated before. Whether the information is good or bad the other needs to know even if it is just about feelings. Minty, Judith. “Conjoined.” pg 810 in “Literature and Introduction to Reading and Writing.” Eighth Edition. Roberts, Edgar V. and Jacobs, Henry E. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 2007-1986