1. Isabella Walshe and Isabella Noto
Mean Time
Isabella Walshe and Isabella Noto

2. Structure First person narrative Monologue
Duffy is talking to herself, regretting the past
Reflection of her relationship
The form and structure of ‘Mean Time’ shapes the meaning of the poem as it goes from stanza to stanza; it is emphasising life as a whole.

3. Literary device: “the clocks slid” and “stole light from my life” – not physically possible for a clock to perform that action. “Slid” refers to time passing. “Stole” refers to time taking away happiness
Stanza 1
The clocks slid back an hour and stole light from my life as I walked through the wrong part of town, mourning our love.
“mourning our love” – shows the main theme of regret and reminiscing the better times. Duffy is writing as an adult about adult life. The aspect of loss is heightened by the connotations of death, giving the end of a relationship with a loss of a life.
“wrong part of town” – suggests she is confused, or that part of town no longer feels right anymore without her partner.

4. Disjointed sentences – “unmendable rain” separated from “fell to the bleak streets”
- Text receivers can relate and think for a moment what Duffy is feeling/they have time to sympathise.
The streets are described as ‘bleak’. Duffy later describes her heart gnawing ‘at all our mistakes’. The personification gives a sense of her heart unable to leave the relationship, instead she is returning again and again to revisit the mistakes that have led her to this point.
Stanza 2
And, of course, unmendable rain fell to the bleak streets where I felt my heart gnaw at all our mistakes
“unmendable rain” – conveys that this cannot be changed, Duffy may be referring to the state of her relationship which is broken and unmendable.
“felt my heart gnaw” – gnaw referring to biting something or eating away. Implies the heart is feeling anxiety and grief over their mistakes/her love is withering away.

5. Stanza 3
If the darkening sky could lift more than one hour from this day there are words I would have never said nor heard you say.
This stanza is a metaphor of going back in time. Duffy is explaining how she regrets what she said and what her love said to her and if she could go back in time to change what happened she would.
“if the darkening sky could lift” – Duffy wants her woes and mistakes to be taken away and for the brighter evenings to come quicker. ‘lift’ refers to the writers hope to take away her mistakes.

6. ‘Theses are the shortened days’ this represents the clocks going backwards in autumn and the environment being much darker and glum.
- is an allusion not merely to the long and lonely nights which she must now spend without her lost love; more significantly, it is also an apt acknowledgement that the shortening of the day is a metaphor for the shortening (by each successive day) of her life itself.
Stanza 4
But we will be dead, as we know, beyond all light. These are the shortened days and the endless nights.
“beyond all light” – implies there would no longer be any hope for them to fix the relationship when they are dead. Themes of losing hope.
“These are the shortened days
and the endless nights” – represents shortened happiness because day represents light; endless nights represents sadness as night illustrates darkness.

7. Main Themes Regretting past love Sadness Darkness Loss of hope Time
Age

8. Language
The language throughout is very calm and well organised which helps to emphasise the realism of the poem. Additionally it also shows that the narrator can accept what happened even though she regrets it and is willing to move on as she has come to the reality that life is short. The language creates a lot of emotive images but never any anger which is surprising and unexpected because a regret of a breakup typically involves anger.

9. Time can be ‘mean’ in the sense that it is malevolent
Time can be ‘mean’ in the sense that it is malevolent. In this case the title may be interpreted as a negative personification of time. This suggests that Duffy is waiting for something significant to happen.
Another interpretation is based on the fact that ‘mean’ also refers to an average. Time, in a sense, averages out our experience by framing our existence within a time period that finally reduces each of us to nothing more than a brief interruption in the world.
Due to the fact Duffy is explaining that we are all stuck in a time clock that eventually runs out may be a reminder that we are unable to escape the tyranny of time. The slippage that results in losing our time when the clocks go forward or back is explored in the poem ‘Mean Time’.