Stealing

Stealing
 ==== ==== ==== This poem is a monologue written in the first person. The speaker in it is very obviously not the poet. Carol Ann Duffy writes sympathetically in that she tries to understand this anti-social character, but he is not at all likeable. What she shows is not so much an intelligent criminal but someone for whom theft is just a response to boredom. Throughout the poem are hints at constructive pursuits (making a snowman) and artistic objects (a guitar, a bust of Shakespeare). The thief steals and destroys but can not make anything. ====

==== The speaker is apparently relating his various thefts, perhaps to a police officer, perhaps to a social worker or probation officer. He realizes at the end of the poem that the person he is speaking to (like the poet and the reader of the poem, perhaps) cannot understand his outlook: “You don't understand a word I'm saying” doesn't refer to his words literally, so much as the ideas he expresses. The poem is rather bleak, as if anti-social behaviour is almost inevitable. The speaker sees the consequences of his actions but has no compassion for his victims. ====

The thief begins as if repeating a question someone has asked him, to identify the “most unusual” things he has stolen. The poet's admiration of the snowman is the closest he comes to affection, but he cares more for this inanimate object than the living human children who have made it. And he wants what has already been made - he cannot see for himself how to make his own snowman. The thief is morally confused - he sees “not taking what you want” as “giving in”, as if you might as well be dead as accept conventional morality. But he alienates us by saying that he enjoyed taking the snowman because he knew that the theft would upset the children. “Life's tough” is said as if to justify this. The sequel comes when the thief tries to reassemble the snowman. Not surprisingly (snow is not a permanent material) “he didn't look the same”, so the thief attacks him. All he is left with is “lumps of snow”. This could almost be a metaphor for the self-defeating nature of his thefts. The thief tells us boastfully he “sometimes” steals things he doesn't need, yet it seems that he always steals what he does not need and cannot use. He breaks in out of curiosity, “to have a look” but does not understand what he sees. He is pathetic, as he seems anxious to make a mark of some kind, whether leaving “a mess” or steaming up mirrors with his breath. He casually mentions how he might “pinch” a camera - it is worth little to him, but much to those whose memories it has recorded.

The final stanza seems more honest. The bravado has gone and the thief's real motivation emerges - boredom, which comes from his inability to make or do anything which gives pleasure. The theft of the guitar is typically self-deceiving. He thinks he “might/learn to play” but the reader knows this will not happen - it takes time and patience. Stealing the “bust of Shakespeare” also seems ironic to the reader. The thief takes an image of perhaps the greatest creative talent the world has ever seen - but without any sense of what it stands for, or of the riches of Shakespeare's drama. The final line, which recalls the poem's conversational opening, is very apt: it as if the speaker has sensed not just that the person he is speaking to is disturbed by his confession but also that the reader of the poem doesn't “understand” him.

This poem is colloquial but the speaking voice here is very distinct. Sometimes the speaker uses striking images (“a mucky ghost”) and some unlikely vocabulary (“he looked magnificent”) but he also uses clichés (“Life's tough”). Single words are written as sentences (“Mirrors...Again...Boredom”). The metre of the poem is loose but some lines are true pentameters (“He didn't look the same. I took a run...”). Mostly the lines are not end-stopped: the breaks for punctuation are in the middles of lines, to create the effect of improvised natural speech. The speaker is trying to explain his actions, but condemns himself out of his own mouth.


 * How does this poem create a sense of a real person speaking?
 * What does the reader think of this character? Does his explanation of why he does what he does make us like him more or less?
 * The speaker recommends “taking/what you want”. Does the whole poem lead you to agree with this attitude?
 * What might the last line of the poem mean? Can we read it in more than one way?
 * The whole poem seems to be spoken by the thief. Does the poet find any way to help us as readers to form our own independent opinion of this character?