Dream of a Lost Friend
Dream of a Lost Friend
How does Duffy powerfully portray the experience of losing a friend in ‘Dream of a Lost Friend’?
In this poem, Duffy explores how the tragic loss of a close friend affects the mourner, and powerfully portrays the implications of their death using imagery, structure and emotive language. She touches upon each of the 5 stages of grief and bereavement, and conveys the psychological process of each of these: Denial, Anger, Guilt, Depression and Acceptance.
Denial is the first stage of grief, in which the mourner refuses to believe that their loss is a reality. Duffy is effective in portraying how this makes the experience of losing a friend so powerful, as she shows Firstly, the title suggests that Duffy refuses to accept her friend’s death, as she refers to her as ‘lost’, suggesting that like the word lost connotes, the deceased may have a chance of being found again. Duffy constantly refers to oxymorons and opposites through the poem such as ‘prayers to Chemistry.’ This suggests again a hysteric confusion over her death, which clash, and reveals her contrasting thoughts which could reflect her trying to accept this death whilst still denying it. Duffy also searches for ‘found’, the opposite to the lost in the title, but she never mentions it, as if no amount of other opposites will help her find the opposite of this death. Duffy also conveys the notion of denial through the sentence, ‘it’s only a dream…only a bad dream.’ This repetition of the motif of dreaming shows an obsession with the idea of this death being part of a dream. Dreams have connotations of peace and happiness, as if she is convincing herself that her friend is experiencing some escapism from the pain of her disease, as Duffy wants to believe that this is for the best. As dreams are from the lexicon of sleep, it is as if she wants to prove that she will wake up. That this is just a brief period of detachment from the world before she comes back, ascertaining the truth that
How does Duffy powerfully portray the experience of losing a friend in ‘Dream of a Lost Friend’?
In this poem, Duffy explores how the tragic loss of a close friend affects the mourner, and powerfully portrays the implications of their death using imagery, structure and emotive language. She touches upon each of the 5 stages of grief and bereavement, and conveys the psychological process of each of these: Denial, Anger, Guilt, Depression and Acceptance.
Denial is the first stage of grief, in which the mourner refuses to believe that their loss is a reality. Duffy is effective in portraying how this makes the experience of losing a friend so powerful, as she shows Firstly, the title suggests that Duffy refuses to accept her friend’s death, as she refers to her as ‘lost’, suggesting that like the word lost connotes, the deceased may have a chance of being found again. Duffy constantly refers to oxymorons and opposites through the poem such as ‘prayers to Chemistry.’ This suggests again a hysteric confusion over her death, which clash, and reveals her contrasting thoughts which could reflect her trying to accept this death whilst still denying it. Duffy also searches for ‘found’, the opposite to the lost in the title, but she never mentions it, as if no amount of other opposites will help her find the opposite of this death. Duffy also conveys the notion of denial through the sentence, ‘it’s only a dream…only a bad dream.’ This repetition of the motif of dreaming shows an obsession with the idea of this death being part of a dream. Dreams have connotations of peace and happiness, as if she is convincing herself that her friend is experiencing some escapism from the pain of her disease, as Duffy wants to believe that this is for the best. As dreams are from the lexicon of sleep, it is as if she wants to prove that she will wake up. That this is just a brief period of detachment from the world before she comes back, ascertaining the truth that