Medusa

Medusa is one of the Gorgons, three sisters from Greek mythology who had snakes for hair and whose terrifying gaze turned those who looked at them to stone. Medusa was slain by the hero Perseus, who chopped off her head. To avoid looking at her directly he used a highly polished shield as a mirror.

The first person narrator, Medusa, is a woman who has been transformed into a Gorgon because of her jealousy. She suspects her husband is cheating on her. Everything she looks on is destroyed, turned to stone, because of jealousy.

Although she has been wronged and is suffering deeply, there is an element of threat throughout the poem, culminating in the final line "Look at me now", which can be read both as a cry of despair and as a threat - if you did look at a Gorgon, you would die.

Form and Structure

The poem is in free verse, structured around the woman's transformation, and the escalating scale of the living things she turns to stone. She starts with a bee and her victims increase in size until she changes a dragon into a volcano. Finally she turns her attention to the man who broke her heart.

Despite the free verse formation, the poem is divided into stanzas of mostly equal length. The final line, which is a stanza on its own, is an exception; this underlines it and creates a sense of menace. 

Sound

• The poem is full of alliteration and rhyme, helping to unify the lines and create a sense of rhythm even in free verse. For example in the third stanza, the two lines but I know you'll go, betray me, stray/from homehave two sets of internal rhyme (know/go and betray/stray), and half rhyme between the final word and the first set of rhyme.
• The third to sixth stanzas all have some end rhyme, which always includes the final line of the verse, creating a sense of finality associated with the death of her victims.
• Duffy uses groups of threes as a means to build up rhythm from the very first line: "a suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy".