Identity And Personhood In Deryn Rees-Jones, The Memory Tray

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To be human is to be apart of a whole, mass collective, relating to, or characteristics of humankind rooting from evolution. Human beings are defined as organisms that have human attributes, normally consisting of two arms, two legs a nose, ears and eyes. Personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person. When a human being is dubbed as a ‘person’, it proclaims their rights as an individual, detaching them from the masses. What makes us different from other beings is our ability to think compassionately, rationally and develop understanding, connections and relationships. We as human beings have a precedence over other beings because we are able to do this.

Identity and personhood is highlighted in Deryn Rees-Jones’ poem ‘The Memory Tray’. The narrator invites you into her world, depicting small, intimate and personal objects that ultimately allow you to see her more than just a human being. You understand that the narrator is evolving into …show more content…

Similarly, given the vagueness of the objects that the narrator “cant quite place” within the second stanza, amplifies the trouble that she does not seem to remember exactly what she’s talking about. She begins to describe “a photograph of somebody I never knew, but knew the name of” perhaps a celebrity or distant family member. The end stop lines portray that there is not a lot of depth to the memories on the tray, that they’re truncated. She then moves on to depict her dream to the reader, and I interpret it almost as if the “drooping heads of flowers” is metaphor about life. Life is transient and in the end, will all she remembers about her own life be milk teeth and a contraceptive? The use of numbers in parenthesis could similarly echo life’s cyclical nature such as the 7 being a reminder of the seven days in a week that repeat over and

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