'A Healthy Meal' questions the ethics of eating meat - a charged debate just as important now, if not more, as it was when the poem was written. It starts by setting the semantic field of food specifically the semantic field of meat. The depiction of the meat in the first two lines at first glance seems to have positive connotations which juxtaposes with the rest of the poem which has very true but negative connotations of meat.
Harsh consonance is used with the letter 'c' in the second stanza with words just as "chatter", "capped" and "claret" to add emphasis on the harsh reality for those animals. The most interesting word out of these three is "claret" as it has two denotations one being blood the other being wine. This is particularly interesting as it links the idea of suffering to even to the wine which has no animal content. This may be because wine is generally paired with meat to enhance flavour. It could also have biblical connotations in which Jesus claimed the wine was blood and to drink it in remembrance of him before he gave the ultimate sacrifice to abolish sin from this world. This may allude to animals giving the ultimate sacrifice to humans just to be food: a very unjust sacrifice.
In the third stanza the theme of animalistic instinct in humans in introduced through the phrase "The woman chewing suckling pig must sleep with her husband later". The usage of the word "must" gives away any conscious choice and suggests it is down to instinct but it is a well known idea that humans have free will. Perhaps suggesting the human race as a whole hide behind the idea that eating meat is instinct instead of making informed choices about it. It could also be a statement about societies expectations of women and how we still live in a male orientated society.
Free will is highlighted at the end of the poem through the epigram "You are what you eat" making it clear that Duffy believes we do have free will as we can choose what we eat. Although it could in the same way be questioning this as it is comparing us to the animals who use instinct rather than their thoughts and ideas. The phrase "You are what you eat" usually entices people to eat healthy but in this case it is used to encourage people to stop eating meat with the potential threat of death through their unhealthy habit of eating meat. It is particularly interesting that this phrase comes from the French when the setting is a french restaurant suggesting a change of attitude from just one country could slowly change the rest of the globe too.
Harsh consonance is used with the letter 'c' in the second stanza with words just as "chatter", "capped" and "claret" to add emphasis on the harsh reality for those animals. The most interesting word out of these three is "claret" as it has two denotations one being blood the other being wine. This is particularly interesting as it links the idea of suffering to even to the wine which has no animal content. This may be because wine is generally paired with meat to enhance flavour. It could also have biblical connotations in which Jesus claimed the wine was blood and to drink it in remembrance of him before he gave the ultimate sacrifice to abolish sin from this world. This may allude to animals giving the ultimate sacrifice to humans just to be food: a very unjust sacrifice.
In the third stanza the theme of animalistic instinct in humans in introduced through the phrase "The woman chewing suckling pig must sleep with her husband later". The usage of the word "must" gives away any conscious choice and suggests it is down to instinct but it is a well known idea that humans have free will. Perhaps suggesting the human race as a whole hide behind the idea that eating meat is instinct instead of making informed choices about it. It could also be a statement about societies expectations of women and how we still live in a male orientated society.
Free will is highlighted at the end of the poem through the epigram "You are what you eat" making it clear that Duffy believes we do have free will as we can choose what we eat. Although it could in the same way be questioning this as it is comparing us to the animals who use instinct rather than their thoughts and ideas. The phrase "You are what you eat" usually entices people to eat healthy but in this case it is used to encourage people to stop eating meat with the potential threat of death through their unhealthy habit of eating meat. It is particularly interesting that this phrase comes from the French when the setting is a french restaurant suggesting a change of attitude from just one country could slowly change the rest of the globe too.
In conclusion the poem a politically charged poem which suggests the rich who can afford not to eat meat follow their animal instinct of greed and ignore the suffering of animals. This also can be taken further than this suggesting they always follow their animal instincts of greed and consequently the less fortunate (specifically the animals in this poem) suffer.
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