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Death by a thousand cuts - Taylor Swift (The Author: Taylor Swift (Taylor…
Death by a thousand cuts - Taylor Swift
The Author: Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is an American and she is born in 1989. This could be a connection with imagery of how she would describe her feelings with. For example, she uses Chandelier in the sentence "chandelier still flickering here". The source of modern days to turn on light are light bulbs. The reason why the author uses the word chandelier is to give an antique feeling to the song and to the listeners. Another example would be in the lyrics "But if the story's over, why am I still writing pages?". Again, in this sentence, she uses the old-fashion way to take notes of things instead of using an online document.
I think that a unique aspect of Taylor Swift is that she believes that talking about her personal life public can be a career weakness. But instead of talking it out in a conversation, she expresses her feelings and some aspects of her overall life in the songs that she produce. For example, she gives information of her life in the sentence "Flashbacks waking me up". Where the public would not know or see her when she is at home asleep. Another example is when she says "'Cause I can't pretend it's okay when it's not". This sentence expresses her feelings of uneasiness and uncertainty.
She is known for writing songs regarding about her personal life. In which this song Death by a thousand cuts is related to her public breakup and a movie called
Someone Great
. This song was about how she has to end the relationship that she did not want to end because she was still in love with the person.
Visual Details
Although the song does not give much detail about the setting of the song, it does give some clues on how the period of history was in. The period of history depicted in the poem is like living in a mansion. I imagined that setting of the poem because of the word chandelier. Because I imagine that chandeliers are hanged at old antique places such as a mansion. The two factors of why I thought of it is because firstly, modern days do not use chandeliers but normal lights. Secondly, because movies with the setting of older years mostly display rich people living in mansions with their beautiful and glistering chandelier.
Title
Viewing from a general point of view, what I can understand from the title “Death by a thousand cuts” could mean a few different meanings. It could be literally being killed by getting injured by cuts, figuratively by being stabbed in the back, or can be your self esteem being killed by verbally spoken words of others.
The title relates to the poem by being broken by saying goodbye to someone you love. Because in the song, it says "saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts, meaning that the author had to let go of something or someone valuable to the point where they would interpret that loss to not have a meaning in life.
Narrator of the poem
I learned that the narrator views heart-break is something hard to overcome.
From looking at the language used, the poem uses words like not, bad, and haunted. The atmosphere of these words are dark, therefore using this language makes the poem stand in the negative side of thoughts.
The tone of voice used in the poem speaks that the narrator's emotion is feeling sad and feeling pain. Because the words "I can't pretend it's okay when it's not" literally states the narrator is not in good state of mind.
Literal Meaning of the song
On the surface, it sounds like this person, Taylor is not mentally alright. The sentence "saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts" literally means as if parting with a person is like being killed by someone using a knife cutting them/author up.
Words used in the poem
“Paper cut stings from my paper-thin plans” - The definition of paper-thin is thin. But when it is put together, the connotation of this sentence is that the author did not plan ahead in time. Because of that, the author now suffers the consequences of their actions.
“I ask the traffic lights if it'll be alright” - Traffic lights are something that signals automobiles positioned at road intersections and controls the flow of traffic. When the term is used in this sentence, the connotation of this word is where the flow of the author’s life going to end. It is like a simile of the author’s life like the normal flow of traffic where things will cool down and she will go back to her own routine or a traffic jam where she will not have control of her feelings and end up in a bad state of mind.
The language used in this song is unusual because the meanings in this song can only be understood by the author as it is her personal life.
Patterns of Imagery
The archetypes I could find is the repeated reference of being haunted by the past. The poem uses words such as flashbacks, drunk, looking through windows and drug.
Figurative language
'Cause the m
o
rning c
o
mes and you're n
o
t my baby
I l
oo
k through the wind
o
ws of this l
o
ve
Even th
o
ugh we b
o
arded them up
Assonance
The repetition of the vowel "o"
Its effect on the poem is that it emphasises this part of the stanza to flow much easier than using cacophony with letters like k or l creating harsh sounds. This creates the atmosphere that the days goes by and the time should pass on smoothly.
My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust
Tryna find a part of me you didn't take up
Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough
But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts
Allusion
This particular stanza shows the references of a movie called
Someone Great
.
This movie is a romantic movie about a girl that was dumped by her long-term boyfriend. In the second sentence, it says "tryna find a part of me you didn't take up", it means that the relationship lasted so long that most of everything was shared between the couple.
Rhyme scheme
The rhyme scheme pattern in this song is irregular because there is only one rhyme in the last two sentences of the third stanza which is age and pages. The effect of this song is disconcerting because the song is mostly focused on the negative aspect of breaking up with someone.
Structure of the poem
The punctuation that the poet use is apostrophe on the word 'cause. This punctuation is used to emphasise the word "because". This structure helps convey that the narrator does not need to say the full word because this word is said many times in the song. Meaning that the narrator could be tired of explaining why to other people.
There are no unusual word order being used in the poem. The poem uses sentences like "I dress to kill my time" or "I take the long way home". This could mean that the narrator wants to be clear on what they are trying to say. Not making people confused when they are trying to explain something.
Theme
I think that the theme of the poem is that when lots of small bad things accumulate may result in death or failure
Reason 1: The title of the poem indicates that a thousand cuts are the same as bad things reoccurring and it may result in death or in other words, the loss of something valuable to an individual.
Reason 2: Diction that the poet use of negative words like pretend, not enough, and wasn't enough depicts that the mental state of the individual was a result of negative thoughts after a long period of time.
Reason 3: Apostrophe suggests that the individual is all alone. When the poet says
"I ask the traffic lights if it'll be alright
They say, "I don't know"
", this may mean that the individual has enclosed all social aspects and talk to inanimate objects instead because they can't back-stab them like other people can do.