Past Paper 2009 Critical Essay Q12

In this essay, I am going to show how the writer Iain Crichton Smith explores th
e emotion of
regret in the poem "You'll Take A Bath". I will do this by exploring various tec
hniques the
writer uses such as imagery , word choice and sentence structure.
The poem is about an elderly woman who lives in a tower of flats, and how her so
n visits
her every second Sunday but feels regret as he feels hes abandoning her. The poe
m is written in
two tenses, imperfect and present.
The writer feels remorse every time he abandons her.
" How could I always bear to be her knight abandoning her to her tower e
ach second Sunday
, a ghost that was locked fast in a council scheme.
Smith uses a rhetorical question here to question his actions, he shows regret.T
he use of the word
tower suggest isolation as she is imprisoned. Also "each second Sunday" tells us
he rarely visits.
The use of the word ghost tells us there is no life left in her, she may as well
be dead. This could
also heighten his regret towards neglecting her. This quote was memorable due to
the connotations
the word "ghost" brought with it.
The writer's mother tried to make him stay longer every time he visited.
" "And now you'll take a bath," she'd always say, just when i was leavin
g to keep
me back."
He hated it when she tried to keep him back at the time but now hes full of regr
et. The word
"just" suggests it was always a desperate attempt at the last second. She wanted
to stop him
going and spend time with him. This line contains the central idea of the poem w
hich is that
water is used to cleanse which gives us the image of the water freeing him from
his guilt.
This quote stuck in my mind due to the desperate attempts of the mother to keep
him there.
The writer feels regret due to not taking care of her the way he should have.
" Once more I see the dirty sleepy child. The water's hot enough. You'll
have a bath."
This memory is used to highlight how he didn't take care of her when she needed
it. He feels
regret due to how much she looked after him when he was small. There is also a s
ense of
irony as she washed away his dirt but now she is dead she cannot wash away his m
etaphorical
dirt. I remembered this quote due to the irony used by Smith to show us how she
can't rid him of
his guilt.
Smith uses various techniques to show how he feels he will never get rid of his
guilt.
" And almost I am clean... in this neat place where each vase has its fl
ower, and the arching
willow its maternal stance."
The inversion used here in the opening line of the third stanza is used to empha
sise the "almost" which
stresses the fact he will never be guilt-free. The use of the word " maternal" i
s used to show how the
tree is protective like his mother was. This strengthens his regret he fells for
abandoning his mother.
. This quote was memorable due to the use of the inversion which also
emphasised the line as well as how he will always feel guilty.
In conclusion , this poem was successful in deepning my understanding of the emo
tion of regret as it
showed how if something isn't looked after or if you miss an oppurtunity you wil
l always feel guilty if
you didn't do the right thing at the time. It was also successful in showing me
how specific literary
techniques can be used to emphasise certain points you want to stand out.