Little Voodoo Doll Essay

Thank you for sharing your poem, “Little Voodoo Doll,” with me. I believe that the speaker of the poem is in fact the “little voodoo doll” and throughout the poem the doll describes its body form and its feelings towards its owner’s actions. The poem has a melancholy and somber tone that, I assume, is used to convey the doll’s long-suffering or passive depression. I used the word passive to describe the doll’s attitude because of lines 13 to 16 in which the doll says “You poke, prod and puncture me...But, I stay silent.” I also believe that line 13, “You poke, prod and puncture,” reflects the use of alliteration in your poem. The strong “p” sounds add an edge to the consistent sorrowful tone of the poem. However, the last two lines of the poem, “there is nowhere else for you to poke me...anymore,” strikes me as obstinate and rebellious as the doll states that it will no longer withstand its owner’s torment. While reading your work, I detected a clear character metamorphosis from oppressed victim to triumphant victor. The word triumphant may be a strong word to describe the doll’s feeling at the end of the poem, but there is definitely a steadfast and unyielding accent.

I like that you dedicated lines to describe its “strings” and “soft insides” because it expressed how vulnerable and fragile the doll was, which allowed the reader to sympathize with it later in the poem when the theme of misuse or neglect was introduced. The verbs that you used in line 2 (“mangle” and “toss”) were able to express misuse sufficiently. I also like that the line 15 only consisted of one word, but. The “but” was a distinct transition in the doll’s disposition and I think it it was the most powerful line in the