Comparison Of Power And Little Girl: My String Bean, My Lovely Woman

The composers of the poems Power and Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman and the novel We Need To Talk About Kevin utilize language to represent a sense of power or powerlessness, or both, in their texts. Knowledge, which can be expounded to others, can be both a source of power and the cause of powerlessness, especially with its misuse. Fertility and motherhood, maternal experiences, are capable of both empowering women while simultaneously rendering them powerless and the attainment of personal power can be, rather than an empowering experience, the cause of the individual’s demise.
Knowledge is a powerful force which equips individuals with a sense of empowerment, yet the lack of or abuse of it can be destructive. The poems Little

The composers of these texts employ language as a mechanism to highlight that the means through which this empowerment is attained has the ability to render an individual powerless. In Power, the “tonic” in “one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic”, whose miraculous medicinal capabilities are highlighted through the hyperbolic imagery in “amber perfect”, is symbolic of the purification of radium by Marie Curie and is presented as the source of her “power” – her scientific advancements in a society in which female intellect was suppressed. However, the “purifying” of radium ultimately rendered her physically powerless due to prolonged radiation sickness, highlighted through the description of her ailments, “the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends”. Curie’s physical deterioration is parallel to her loss of personal power, with the “suppurating skin” being symbolic of her decaying empowerment. The paradoxical statement, “She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power”, presents a sense of both power and powerlessness through the repetition of “wounds” as it encapsulates the consequences of her gaining of personal power – the attaining of fame and power, “famous woman”, yet also her deterioration and powerlessness, “her wounds”. This ability for one’s personal power to be the cause of their powerlessness and demise is also reflected in the novel We Need To Talk About Kevin. The protagonist, Kevin, sought to gain personal power through public recognition – the main motivation for his transformation to a “notorious fiend” through the school massacre. The allusion to the renowned Zambian political leader in “now he’s a celebrity who’s