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Kate Marshall's Palindrome '

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Nate Marshall's "palindrome" is a poem about a guy who is reminiscing about a girl he has known and loved since they were six. The two had some good times while they were younger, but broke up and now he misses her. Most people, after reading "palindrome" would all agree that this is the final meaning for the poem, however, after studying the literary theory of deconstruction, one knows that there is no unified meaning in any given text. This journal will show how the poem deconstructs itself due to the nature of the language being unstable. First, starting with the binary oppositions in the poem. Dobie describes binary opposition as paired opposites in which the first named is the dominant figure (Dobie, 158). There is a great deal of binary …show more content…

Every word spoken or written is a signifier and the narrator or author has control over it. The signified is the conceptual meaning indicated by a signifier and the narrator or author has not control of it and this is what cause the language to be ambiguous (Dobie, 156). Take for instance the word "never" the meaning of the word is hard to determine. "we have never kissed behind the school", is the way the narrator uses the word (Marshall). "never" in this sentence can be interrupted as the narrator and his ex-girlfriend did not kiss at all behind the school or that at no time in their past have either one of them kissed behind the school. Another example of the speech being ambiguous is with the word "backwards". The narrator states, '' we walked backwards into Baskin-Robbins", but it is hard to tell whether the narrator is remembering the event as if he was rewinding like a movie, so they really walked in the Baskin-Robbin forward (Marshall). Or the narrator and his ex-girlfriend could have truly walked backwards in the Baskin-Robbin, it sounds crazy, but the narrator and his ex-girlfriend could have thought it was cute to do. "Throw up" is also ambiguous for the fact the reader does not know if the narrator and his ex-girlfriend "throw up" the ice cream meaning toss the ice cream into the cup or the two ate too much ice cream and are now vomiting the ice cream back up (Marshall).

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